60th anniversary celebrations of the James Bond franchise are underway, with all 25 official films now available on Amazon Prime in numerous countries along with a special celebrating the franchise’s music.
One of the film series’ long-running producers, Michael G. Wilson, appeared at a British Film Institute panel recently as part of the anniversary where the inevitable question of who will next play the role came up.
Whilst there’s no new information on that front, and isn’t expected to be for some time, Wilson made it clear to Deadline they will never cast a twentysomething actor in the role of Bond because that’s not the character:
“We’ve tried looking at younger people in the past. But trying to visualize it doesn’t work. Remember, Bond’s already a veteran. He’s had some experience. He’s a person who has been through the wars, so to speak. He’s probably been in the SAS or something. He isn’t some kid out of high school that you can bring in and start off. That’s why it works for a 30-something.”
As we know from previous talk by fellow producer Barbara Broccoli, whoever is hired is expected to be in the role for a minimum of ten years, with the hired actor not expected to be getting to work for at least two or three years.
The restrictions suggest the producers are looking for someone who would be no younger than 28/29 and no older than about 35/36 right now to be in that thirty-something sweet spot for their first Bond effort.
That suggests actors born somewhere in the range of around 1986-1994 and immediately rules out candidates both young (Tom Holland, Jacob Elordi) and older (Tom Hardy, Jamie Dornan, Idris Elba) leaving actors like Richard Madden, Kit Harington and Oliver Jackson-Cohen as examples of the oldest, Harry Styles an example of the youngest, while actors like Jack O’Connell, Henry Golding, Dev Patel, Jonathan Bailey, Jack Lowden, Nic Hoult, Rege-Jean Page, Taron Egerton and Aaron Taylor Johnson are in that key ‘window’.
Wilson says whomever is cast will be doing the same audition scene every Bond since Connery has done – the seduction scene in “From Russia With Love” where Bond comes back to his room after the assassination, goes into the bathroom to bathe and finds Tatiana in his bed. He says: “anyone who can bring that scene off is right for Bond… it’s tough to do.”
