James Bond has entered a new era, only this time it’s not due to imminent casting announcement of who will take over the role once Daniel Craig’s license to kill is officially retired, but instead, it involves Amazon’s MGM acquisition which will prime ship 007 and Rocky to the tech giant’s media repertoire.
While Amazon’s recent purchase did not immediately disclose what would happen with No Time to Die ahead of its fall premiere, the news did have some wondering if 007 could suddenly be heading straight to Amazon Prime Video, just like Borat 2 and Coming 2 America. This possibility was almost instantly dismissed by Eon Productions chief Barbara Broccoli, who made clear No Time to Die was heading to theaters and that the studio is fully committed to continuing making James Bond movies for theaters in the future.
Even if that will ease the minds of those fearful of what Amazon could do with James Bond, it does raise the question of whether keeping 007 as a movie theater exclusive is the best course of action moving forward. After all, as a 60-year-old franchise, James Bond is not immune to the passage of time so the espionage genre has already had to adapt as times continuously change, even in his own flashy world.
Sean Connery’s 007 really wasn’t above slapping women around, even if they were temporary romantic interests, and yet in No Time to Die’s trailers Bond now has a female rival that’s quickly caught up to him in the 00 ranks and is not afraid to let him know she's just as dangerous as he is. So as James Bond moves on from old-fashioned poorly aged stereotypes for the likes of Moneypenny and the rest of the Bond women, maybe it’s also time to send 007 on the first of many streaming missions.
As Disney would be happy to tell anyone, branching out Marvel and Star Wars to streaming television is a great way to generate new profit avenues from those franchises that have already proven to be billion-dollar winners at the box office, which is exactly the kind of tag James Bond has in his MI6 personnel file. With so many Bond novels written since Ian Fleming’s passing up to this day, there is surely plenty of source material and new stories that could make for potential 007 spin-offs.
On the face of it, the action genre is not incredibly well represented in the series format, with most other shows that delve into it only doing it part-time while focusing on other aspects of its core plot, yet it’s precisely this approach that would make a James Bond series so interesting. 007 films already transitioned from the silliness of Timothy Dalton’s last couple of movies to the more high octane action in the 90s that saw Pierce Brosnan go head to head with any action movie from the era, and then again with the grittier and rougher on the edges Bond from the last decade.
When Daniel Craig’s turn came, Casino Royale and Skyfall showed how writers could give Bond less superficial themes to transform the world’s most famous spy into much more than just a showcase spectacle for fancy cars, the latest gadgets, and beautiful women. This newfound maturity in James Bond is the kind of route new 007 content should explore if Eon is to consider giving audiences more of those glamourous missions on TV, besides the usual movie every four years or so.
In Bond’s case, the spy’s high budget requirements and globetrotting habits would probably mean he’d benefit more from a miniseries format that leaves enough room for plenty of exciting car chases and shootouts, while also adding more emotional layers that develop the character, as well as the rest of the MI6 staff and any potential flings 007 could come across. Of course, if Bond is to be partially repurposed in the series format, it's obvious the character lacks the same type of carefully constructed world the MCU or Star Wars have, so any project veering in that direction would have to hold its own as an appealing form of entertainment.
Perhaps, streaming could serve as a potential testing ground to add new ideas to the James Bond franchise. Since it's a given Eon has no plans to genderswap the role of James Bond, a character in the vein of Lashana Lynch's Nomi in No Time to Die could get the honor of starring in that hypothetical 007 spinoff; potentially James Bond from the movies and TV could be two entirely different takes or life moments for the character; or, if producers are still so vehemently against casting a woman in a similar lead agent role, then there are also the Young Bond books to draw inspiration from.
All things considered, the James Bond brand has too much appeal to pass on the opportunity to keep on developing the character in similar ways to what the Daniel Craig era did. On pure face value, Amazon's near $8.45 billion certainly warrants its hefty price tag considering Rocky and Creed came in the same bundle, but adding the entire James Bond film collection to Prime Video is not the same as adding Marvel's entire content library to Disney Plus, so the company might look at other possibilities for Bond under a different light now.
Amazon may not have the need to experiment with James Bond, and it might be more than happy to keep the property as a film franchise that churns out a billion dollars every few years, but limiting itself to that is playing well below the franchise's potential. If Amazon valued MGM's legacy catalog so highly because of the possibilities it saw in producing new content for The Pink Panther, it might as well start doing it for the biggest media asset it just bought.