For more than 60 years, one family has determined everything about James Bond, from how he takes his martini (“shaken, not stirred”) to his firearm (Walther PPK) and vehicle (Aston Martin) of choice. But on Thursday, a landmark deal with Amazon MGM reshaped the course of cinema’s most enduring franchise.
As part of the pact, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, the heads of Eon and custodians of all things Bond, have entered into a joint venture with the streaming giant that will see them cede creative control of the property. The announcement, unveiled as the series was at an impasse, has stunned Hollywood, where the Broccoli family has become nearly as synonymous with 007 as its creator Ian Fleming.
The super spy was last seen in 2021’s “No Time to Die,” which ended with Daniel Craig, who had portrayed the MI agent in five wildly successful films, staring into the sunset as a missile attack prepared to send him to the exotic locale known as oblivion. And even as every actor with a British accent has seen themselves tipped to slip into Bond’s designer tux, development on a follow-up has stalled. There’s still no director, no story, and no script for a new installment, sources say, and without those elements little progress has been made on finding a new leading man. Though there has been a character bible circulating around the studio and a few informal meetings with potential creative talent, shooting on a new movie is at least a year away. That’s been a source of frustration at Amazon, which spent $8.5 billion to buy MGM four years ago, in no small part because of the ties to Bond. Even with the initial acquisition, Amazon MGM only owned 50% of the franchise and was relegated to being a passive partner when it came to artistic choices.
Rumors have swirled for years that the Broccolis have clashed with Amazon over the direction of Bond. The family felt the e-commerce giant was a poor home for the elegant secret agent and bristled at its efforts to expand the scope of the franchise, while Amazon executives were frustrated by the glacial pace of getting a new film off the ground, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The company managed to get the Broccolis to sign off on a reality competition spinoff show, “007: Road to a Million,” but other attempts to revitalize the property have yet to bear fruit.
Amazon MGM’s joint venture with the Broccolis is unique in that it is not an outright sale. The family will retain an ownership stake. However, the Broccolis, who controlled everything from casting to marketing decisions, will release their grip on the series. That will allow Amazon MGM to move more quickly to figure out how to keep Bond relevant.
“This is the next logical step for the Bond franchise. 007 is the crown jewel in Amazon’s library, and their best hope — in terms of IP — for continued box office success,” says Jeff Bock, an analyst with Exhibitor Relations. “With the old guard, for better or worse, productions took a long time to incubate. That just doesn’t cut it in today’s theatrical marketplace.”
And in this fractured media landscape, the whole notion of a franchise has changed to become more expansive. The Broccolis have largely resisted the changing times, focusing almost exclusively on crafting big screen installments that arrive within years of each other, and only after an exhaustive development process. With the family stepping back, Amazon and MGM can craft a larger cinematic universe — one potentially filled with television shows and film spinoffs in the vein of Marvel or Star Wars. In a sign of how different Amazon’s approach may be, founder Jeff Bezos was crowdsourcing on social media for suggestions of who should next play Bond shortly after Thursday’s deal was announced.
“You can really reimagine this series,” says Eric Handler, senior media and entertainment analyst at Roth Capital Partners. “Now, Amazon can maybe stay on a linear track with the films, but maybe they create a streaming series about Moneypenny or tell an origin story about Q. Do they have Ana de Armas’s character from ‘No Time to Die’ appear in a separate movie? It’s all possible.”
For now, Amazon MGM is keeping its cards close to the chest, partly because the deal, which is expected to close sometime this year, is still subject to regulatory approval — keeping all major creative decisions on ice for now. The most immediate concern is determining who will step into the void left by the Broccolis. Other major franchises, such as Marvel, Star Wars and DC, have an executive (Kevin Feige or Kathleen Kennedy) or pair of executives (James Gunn and Peter Safran) tasked with guiding the ship, something that analysts say is critical to ensure quality control. Amazon’s head of film Courtenay Valenti does have experience with Tiffany brands like “Harry Potter” from her years at Warner Bros. But given the broadness of her purview at Amazon, overseeing streaming in addition to theatrical releases, will she need to hire another person to fully focus on Bond?
“You need to have somebody at the top that has a vision of where they want to go with the series,” Handler says.
Whoever it is calling the shots, there’s plenty riding on the cinematic return of Bond. It’s one of Hollywood’s most financially lucrative properties, with global grosses topping $7.8 billion across 25 films over seven decades. Since its foray into the movie business, Amazon has found some success with critical hits like “Being the Ricardos” and “Manchester By the Sea.” Yet despite spending lavishly on tentpoles like “Red One” with Dwyane Johnson, the company has struggled to launch the kind of broadly appealing films that tap the zeitgeist — and earn money at the box office. In a cultural landscape of short attention spans, the company can’t afford to have its most valuable IP in limbo.
For the Broccoli family, this move comes at a moment of transition. In a statement, the 82-year-old Wilson, who has co-written the scripts for some of the films along with producing them, announced that he’s retiring from the film industry. “I am stepping back from producing the James Bond films to focus on art and charitable projects,” he wrote. Meanwhile Broccoli, 64, plans to remain in Hollywood but focus her time and attention elsewhere as a producer, having recently bought the rights to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s memoir “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s.” She’s also working on the musical “Buena Vista Social Club,” which is slated to open on Broadway in 2025. “With the conclusion of ‘No Time to Die’ and Michael retiring from the films, I feel it is time to focus on my other projects,” she said.
At a time when no side character is too obscure to lead a spinoff or sequel, Bond is the rare film series that hasn’t been endlessly exploited. The Broccolis have long turned down offers to do shows about Bond’s early years and take a deliberative approach to deciding where and how the secret agent will appear. Collaborators on Bond films have expressed an appreciation of the Broccolis’ protectiveness of the character but note they’re not always open to suggestions or input from their studio partners.
And there were concerns about how the family could top the Craig run of films, which broke box office records for the franchise and garnered its greatest critical acclaim. During the lead-up to “No Time to Die,” Broccoli, who had advocated for Craig’s hire over more conventional choices, described Craig’s decision to retire from the role as “traumatic.”
It may be even more traumatic to see who is ultimately granted Bond’s license to kill. Other creators like George Lucas have gotten big payouts, handing over the rights to the characters they safeguarded to larger corporate owners, only to later express regrets about the direction their franchises took. And both Broccolis were raised by Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, the producer who first brought Bond to the big-screen, with a sense that their destinies were inextricably linked with that of the hard-drinking, fast-living daredevil.
“For better or worse, we are the custodians of this character,” Broccoli told Variety in 2020. “We take that responsibility seriously.”
Now, Bond’s future is someone else’s responsibility.
Adam B. Vary contributed to this report.
