Producers ‘Haven’t Even Begun’ the Reinvention Process for Bond 26

While promoting the upcoming Amazon Prime Video series 007: Road to a Million, the Bond producers spoke with the Guardian about the current status of Bond 26 as well as their broader plans for the franchise.

Barbara Broccoli has no doubts that the concept of James Bond is still relevant and that the world will continue to need him. She underlined the perennial relevance of the character throughout the past 60 years and how this has been achieved through modernisation with each new actor.

This creative process of modernising the franchise takes a while and according to her they “haven’t even begun” the first steps yet. Instead the producers have invested their time over the past two years on Broadway productions and the upcoming Prime series. The latter is said to have been “a nice fun thing to be doing in the meantime.”

Here’s what Barbara Broccoli had to say on the reinvention process: “I go back to GoldenEye when everyone was saying ‘the cold war is over, the wall is over, Bond is dead, no need for Bond, the whole world’s at peace and now there’s no villains’ – and boy was that wrong!”

With Casino Royale the trajectory of the franchise shifted once again as they were interested in what a modern hero would look like in the 21st-century:

“Daniel [Craig] gave us the ability to mine the emotional life of the character… and also the world was ready for it. I think these movies reflect the time they are in, and there’s a big, big road ahead reinventing it for the next chapter and we haven’t even begun with that.”

Broccoli added that once they commit to making a James Bond film it usually takes “three or four years” of their full attention. The upcoming Prime series which they both oversaw as producers would’ve therefore prevented them from being able to do so. This helps explain why pre-production has yet to start on Bond 26.

What might worry some fans is that the producers have ideas to further expand the 007: Road to a Million series if successful. Broccoli would love the series to go global with many different versions across several continents including Africa and Asia.

Luckily for fans she underlined the fact that the feature films will continue to be their main priority despite the dive into streaming. With the show’s premiere in just a few weeks it’s safe to say that their focus will soon shift towards Bond 26.

She finally added: “We make the Bond movies for the big theatrical screen and everything about the Bond movies is for audiences to see around the world on that format.” This reaffirms that Bond 26 will not go directly to streaming as some had suggested after Amazon bought MGM.

For those interested – 007: Road to a Million will premiere November 10th on Prime Video.

Source: The Guardian