James Bond films stall after Barbara Broccoli clashes with Amazon Studios, report claims
James Bond films stall after Barbara Broccoli clashes with Amazon Studios, report claims
Future James Bond films have been reportedly stalled due to disagreements between Amazon Studios and franchise producer Barbara Broccoli.
The report outlined that the fallout is due to differences over the creative direction of the franchise, with Amazon reportedly in favour of “Marvel-style” ideas to expand the franchise, such as spinoff shows and films.
No, for fucks sake. No!
Broccoli is reported to have baulked at the pitch, telling friends that Amazon are “fucking idiots” who are taking the franchise “hostage”. She has reportedly expressed her disinterest in continuing to work with Amazon for any Bond films. NME has reached out to Amazon MGM Studios for comment.
"Fucking idiots" indeed. And too predictable, to be honest.
Amazon Bond or no new Bond at all?
I'm good with how the franchise ended in the last movie.
I stopped after the first Daniel Craig.
Nothing against him, he's a great actor. Just didn't like the direction of the franchise.
The 70's Roger Moore stuff was campy (which wasn't the best, but you knew that going in) but at least that had it's antecedent with Roger Moore playing The Saint in the 1960's.
The only type of Bond show I'd be in favor of is a TV series that faithfully recreates the Bond novels in their respective era (1950s-'60s). I would love to see the books remade as a period drama series. Hour-long episodes for each book, maybe multiple episodes if the story was really detailed.
That would be an amazing series, and a unique take, as film Bond is nothing like book Bond. Except for the Daniel Craig era. That's about as close to book Bond as we've ever had. That, and Timothy Dalton's License to Kill film. Book Bond was a very dark and gritty character.
Wow, brilliant idea.
Very much like Roger Moore as The Saint, though updated, and less "30 minute 1960's escapism for 13" black-and-white tv".
Plus you cannot tell me that Bond didn't survive in that last movie.
It even says "James Bond Will Return" at the end. So like duh, he didn't die
(I know but I really want to believe we're not done with Daniel Craig as Bond)
One of the themes in no time to die is that 007 is just a name that can be given and exchanged to anyone. Bond will return but it won't be Daniel Craig.
What I don't get is that they link this James Bond to every single movie that has happen and essentially said that Craig was the embodiment of those characters...and now he's actually gone. So are they going to have just someone else be James Bond with the same name?
Daniel Craig is done with Bond, so I doubt we'll see him again in the role.
I saw the credit at the end as, "We're not done with the franchise, more Bond films will be made." Not necessarily that this particular James Bond will return. That caption is a standard on almost every Bond film ever, so of course they had to include it.
Although I admit, in my movie theater viewing, there were a couple little old ladies sitting near me who waited to the end of the credits with bated breath, then heaved a sigh of relief when they saw the caption. It was so cute!
If you're talking OG Moonraker, instead of "look, people like star wars, let's do that!" Moonraker, I would put in many $ to this venture (like $10, maybe)
Moonraker is my favorite Bond movie. Hands down and unapologetically.
That sounds great. Highly doubt that’s what Amazon has in mind, though.
That name sounds made up.
More power to her though, fuck Amazon.
All of the Bond films were produced by someone named Brocolli.
Albert R. Broccoli was the original co-producer of the Bond franchise (along with Harry Saltzman). Barbara Broccoli is his daughter, who helped him with production through the '80s and took over the franchise starting with GoldenEye in '95.
She's responsible for the more modern era of Bond that started with Pierce Brosnan, and also the rebooted era with Daniel Craig. She specifically rebooted the franchise because of Austin Powers, which satirized the Bond films and basically turned their tropes into a joke. She had to reinvent Bond so people would stop comparing her films to Austin Powers.
I'm surprised the family name isn't associated with the invention of brocolli. Although, they are of Italian descent, which is where the word of the vegetable came from.
the family do claim that they were the first to cultivate it in the 1600s. don't know if there's any truth to that.
God I’m so tired of Marvel.
I know people like it, and that’s okay, but every action movie is now Guardians of the Galaxy. The earlier marvel movies are fun too, but by Ironman 2/3 there was so much product placement and it all felt very stale and sterile.
I defended the Marvel offerings post Endgame longer than I should have, there’s some good stuff in there like No Way Home and Shang-Chi but it’s reeked of producers trying to rush the build it took to make the final two Avengers films so anticipated and fun. Even if you hate all of those films and think they are bland you have to admit there was something exciting about the long form storytelling they were doing and the experience of seeing those in the theater was a cool shared experience with so many people around the world. I hope they can recapture that lightening with the Russos coming back but somehow I doubt it
Long way to say, I love the MCU and still agree that’s the last thing Bond, LoTR, Star Trek, fuck name an IP and it shouldn’t be trying to Marvel itself. Let Marvel be Marvel
Can't stand those films. I like the Raimi Spider-man films and the first Iron Man. That's it. All the other Marvel films are repetitive and boring. I stopped watching them around Iron Man 2/3 as well.
Same goes for Star Wars. Rogue One was good. Stopped caring about the franchise after episode VIII (which I actually enjoyed). There are too many shows and spinoffs now and I got burnt out. Never thought I'd see the day when I'd stop being a Star Wars fan but I literally can not stand any of the shows. They're all boring.
They tried to milk it too much. The initial MCU was good. Phase 1/2. Now it's just exhausting. Too many characters, too many shows that either don't seem to be canon or are completely ignored by the films, too many characters to keep track of.
Marvel peaked with endgame. It's been downhill ever since
You're trying to tell us you wouldn't be thrilled to go see "Jeff Bezos' Amazon Presents Amazon's James Bond™: The End of The World Is Not Enough: Part 1: When James Met Q: Part 1?"
I'm tired of marvel as well but comparing movies to guardians of the galaxy attempting to make it seem like a bad thing isn't really doing what you think it might. GotG is now a gem in the marvel movies cuz it's doing it's own thing and telling it's own story and does it very well.
Yes but if every movie is copying that template, they're no longer doing their own thing.
The complaint isn't about GotG, it's about everything being the same.
I say it every time this comes up, and it sparks anger, but the movie that did it was Civil War.
Iron Man flinches from a punch Cap throws. A human with peak capable strength does that to the same goddamn dude who took a fucking tank round and just had scorch marks on his armor.
Then in infinity war, the Two stone wielding Thanos frightens Hulk? Bullshit, get out of here. Hulk would have flattened him.
I bet they're not telling us the real reason. Bezo's mid-life crisis stepped in and he wanted to play Bond.
Honestly doubt it. Bezos' sex scandal involved cheating on his wife with a single age appropriate woman, whom he is currently in an exclusive relationship with.
Ah, the old Michael Jackson and Nick Cage syndrome.
/me imagines the Donald Pleasance Bloefeld as James Bond.
Barbara Broccoli? Is this all a joke timeline?
What does Cara Cauliflower have to say?
Mind blowing bit of trivia - her ancestors did in fact "invent" broccoli, they made the hybrid and a fortune in the process.
Maybe all the joke names in the franchise were actually real names after all.
This is where all of the poorly thought out stories come to life.
Amazon out to ruin Bond.
They're trying to ruin lord of the rings so why not bond?
New media does not change anything about old media.
Those old movies still exist and stay equally as enjoyable to watch no matter what they do with the new films.
I used to feel this way, too, but I think I've recanted. Whenever I talk about Star Wars now, for example, nobody seems to have any affinity for the Original Trilogy (my favorites), but almost everyone is some shade of familiar with the numerous Disney+ shows (I've tried them all, but they're just not for me). I also can't help but feel like what those three films represented to me as a whole has been fundamentally transformed by the quantity-over-quality approach that Disney has taken.
In other words, the originals still exist and are just as enjoyable for me, but the "meta" and public discourse about the franchise has shifted in a way that is often alienating to me. Could also just be part of getting old, I suppose!
Bond hasn't been good since they couldn't use the Soviets anymore as an enemy. Modern producers aren't willing to sacrifice Chinese money to make a real enemy.
Daniel Craig's Casino Royale was so good because it did something new; it flipped the series on its head and that was a refreshing change of pace. Realistically gritty action thrillers have dominated the genre ever since. Diluting that with Marvel-esque writing or generic spin-offs would be such a letdown.
I'm not sure what I want next from the Bond franchise, but a Marvel influence is definitely not it.
Amazon reportedly in favour of “Marvel-style” ideas to expand the franchise, such as spinoff shows and films.
Its not like there are a shortage of spy-thrillers bouncing around. I don't see anything immediately wrong with an MI6 extended universe, particularly if it lets younger and more unorthodox talent have fun with the setting. FFS, "Agents of Shield" and the Netflix TV street-level-hero spin offs were functionally thrillers in their own right. A lot of them were very good.
But there's so much wrong going on under the hood of the industry. More and more talent sacrificed on the alter of AI generated content (the Rings of Power generative dialogue/screenwriting was a horrifying example of how to waste $700M in acting/set design). More focus on special effects and less on cohesive storytelling or direction.
Like, if you got the writers room from Slow Horses to do a spin-off franchise called "009", I would be fully on board. But if its just going to be the franchise eating its own tail with forty different poorly adapted variations on Casino Royale... yeah, I can understand why there would be drama.
As much as I think AI will make everything worse, I think it's just a symptom of the real problem in the industry.
I think it boils down to two things:
- Major studios are pure capitalists with no artistic interest, with newcomers like Apple and Amazon not even having a culture for authenticity in any part of their operation
- Marvel made too much money
So what they've learned is that there's no point in making movies - if they want to make money they need to make a franchise. So they keep investing in anything they can possibly milk into a soulless franchise that sucks in consumers and leaves them hooked.
There's no room for artistic authenticity in this process. It will produce worthless garbage by design. It's consumerism turned into cinematography.
Thank god some are rebelling against it.
Amazon MGM has a shit ton of franchises under their belt, why not do things with them? I would be happy if they took this direction with Stargate for example.
If any expansion came from the creative team behind Bond I’d be ok with it, I guess, but when owner Amazon is trying to force it reeks of cash- grab monetisation.
I mean, the Bond franchise is only in the state its in because the original producers couldn't crank out more than one movie every seven years. That's embarrassing. And everything since Skyfall has been mid-to-crap, despite them throwing fortunes behind it and having a Chad like Daniel Craig at the helm.
That said, the parent company playing tug-of-war with the creative team over how to deliver the next edition in the franchise is a big reason why we get these annoying delays. But, at the same time, giving ten creative teams $50M to make their own entries in the franchise strikes me as a better move than giving one team $500M.
Can you tell me more about Rings of Power using GenAI?
Amazon Storywriter was developed back in 2015 to generate long form works - novels, screenplays, etc - without the need for large writers' rooms.
There's a free version that's been floating around she a few years, but it has been in active use by the Amazon Prime content team for longer than that
Bond should go into the vault and should only be taken out after a decade or two intermission. The Daniel Craig era is a nice capstone to pause the franchise on. IMHO while Casino Royale was a nice reimagining of Bond the last three movies have become too derivative. Let the franchise rest and only revive it when it’s for something fresh and worthwhile. Don’t just make Bond movies for the sake of continuing the franchise.
Yeah but money
I think also older audiences were more forgiving of the fuzzy, sometimes contradictory continuity between the older films. Somehow Pierce Brosnan and Sean Connery were the same guy and everyone just kind of rolled with that.
The future of Bond should tighten up continuity from here on out, because for better or worse I don't think modern audiences are as able to just fuzz away discrepancies.
My idea would be to pull from the "James Bond is a codename" fan theory- which currently doesn't work, but to say Daniel Craig is the original James Bond and all the Bonds after him take up the name as a code name. This can open up some possibilities and just make it easier to keep things straight. Old Bonds don't necessarily even have to die, they can retire or be moved out of the roll. You can bring them back as villains, or make one into the new Q or something.
Next James Bond takes place around Amazon fulfillment centers around the world, and Alexa plays a key part in it. Bond is a black, young female agent this time because diversity (her father was Bond 009), and she has super powers from computer chips running in Amazon cloud.
Amber Ruffin as Jane Bond confirmed?
WHAAAT?
Welp… rest well for now, 007. To say it has been a great run is an understatement. Amazon will likely get bored of this toy eventually and perhaps it will end up in competent hands again and we can simply laugh at whatever trash is produced.
Amazon has some good shows, like Invincible, Fallout and The Boys, but then there’s Rings of Power. RoP alone is enough for me to be okay with a Bond pause.
If Amazon can’t continue with Bond, maybe they can sell the franchise to Disney, paving the way for a Bond/Doctor Who crossover in which Bond is a rogue timelord known as The Bachelor.
The thing about the Marvel Cinematic Universe is they already had a massive comic book universe to build from with thousands of stories and characters, and that excludes the ones they already licensed out. Only other IP that can match that catalog is DC, and they keep retreating back to Batman and Superman. Building a cinematic universe from a single character or premise requires way more planning and preparation than studios are willing to spend on.
I actually don’t even know if it’s the planning, studios don’t have the patience for it, the Infinity Saga took 10 years to build to the crescendo they hit around Civil War and that was enhanced by the surprisingly wide appeal of Guardians of the Galaxy, a refreshing shift to Thor(which they eventually overplayed) and the major cultural moment of Black Panther to get there
I'd go for period adaptations of the books as a streaming show. Finally get a real version of Moonraker for example.
This would be such a smart direction to go with it
So that is not the direction they’re going to take.
Her name sounds very cartoonish.
Hard to leaf a good impression when all these people believe themselves to be broccstars, impossible to bond like that
I'm actually not that opposed to a Bond TV show, shorter Bond adventures with more of the older style bonds campy nature and gadgets sounds like a fun time.
Or maybe use the Young Bond book series as a basis, they were pretty fun reads.
Young bond is River Cartwright.
However. I would like to follow some of the other 00's adventures.
Because Marvel is doing so well right now.
Marvel doing less well than before is still doing a lot more well than I'm doing
They're still making new Bond films??
Yes. Yes they are.
I wonder if she would have changed her name if her dad hadn't been famous with that name. Or if by the time you can legally change it, you're inured to people's reaction.
