Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.“Who’d you pick as the next Bond?” Jeff Bezos asked. And so began a new era for the biggest star in British cinema. The question was floated this week to mark Amazon acquiring creative control of the James Bond franchise. This being 2025, Bezos was posting on X, with his curiosity framed as the kind of populist appeal that might actually be acted on. Squint and you might even have sensed a regal invitation from the expensively muscled Bezos, who, after all, shares initials with the character. Dear God — were we meant to vote for him?The deal sees longtime producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson remain co-owners of the brand, but with all filmmaking decisions now the sole domain of the company that bought Bond parent studio MGM in 2021. Behind the politely upbeat press release, it marks a brutal end for a family business. The adult children of original Bond producer, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, will now be relegated to the back seat — or boot — of the 007 Aston Martin, while Bezos and team take the wheel. The handover may not have been wholly amicable. For some time, reports have suggested a relationship strained by arguments over the future of the role vacated by Daniel Craig after the most recent Bond movie, 2021’s No Time to Die. Last December, Broccoli was reported as calling her corporate partners “fucking idiots”.There are those in the film industry who may feel she has a point. In general, as a creator of popular, high-quality cinema, Amazon has proved itself an accomplished online grocer. Last year, for example, the studio’s most popular film at the box office was Red One, a critically derided, fixed grin of a Christmas caper starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, whose $185mn gross still represented a heavy loss given a reported $250mn budget.Still, cinemas are likely to be only a limited part of Bond’s future. Red One, after all, later found its audience on Amazon’s streaming arm. A reasonable assumption is that the company will now move quickly to end the four-year stasis since No Time To Die, reported to have been partly caused by disagreements over who should replace Craig. (Amazon is said to favour an established name.) But a still safer bet is that future Bond movies will be joined by all manner of cheaper streamed spin-offs and origin stories to delight the Prime subscriber. Five hundred identical episodes of Moneypenny: The Series and Young Oddjob here we come.All of which will make for an unfamiliar new chapter. Amazon would surely call it an inevitable bringing into line with the multi-platform spirit of the times. Under the care of Broccoli and Wilson, Bond remained a fiercely protected prestige brand, treated as far more than mere Intellectual Property. Yet all signs suggest Bezos bought MGM as a treasure trove of exactly that. (Early tensions are said to have arisen with the producers when Amazon executive Jennifer Salke called Bond “content” in a meeting.)For Bezos, the deal also meant he found himself buying Bond just months from the scheduled release of No Time to Die. The movie made $774mn — respectable, but barely enough to break even. Prestige has overheads. Broccoli and Wilson might well point out the film came out with Covid still wreaking havoc. The counter argument would be that since 2021, some very expensive films starring supposedly bulletproof old favourites have been coolly received by modern audiences. See Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and the most recent Mission: Impossible for details. The counter counter argument would be that those movies still did better in cinemas than Red One.But culturally as well, Bond is at a crossroads. Even before Craig exited, there was debate about the place for a character who had always been so definitively white, male, straight and able-bodied. Now it is easy to imagine Bezos choosing to bask in the online love he would get for reclaiming the character for the pumped-up “manosphere”. One possible future could even see the blood and profanity cranked up to outdo the Kingsman movies, gleefully puerile riffs on the Bond mythos that became big hits while Broccoli and Wilson took the real thing in more grown-up directions.He might even end up American. The irony of the timing is hard to miss. Broccoli and Wilson are British-American dual passport holders, but the deal still feels loaded with national symbolism at a point of stark friction between old transatlantic allies. Some will see a true British icon liberated by zesty US enterprise. Others may mourn a character of long history and real cultural weight becoming one more trinket for an effortful Silicon Valley billionaire, whose staff may or may not have the first clue about how to make a good film.There again, Bond does thrive amid conflict. On-screen, the character has always hit top form with the real world at its most fraught. The first glory days took place against the backdrop of the cold war. The Craig renaissance began with the UK still active in Iraq. If 007 works best when Britain is mired in geopolitical crises — well, we surely have more of those to look forward to. Under American ownership in a fast-changing world order, though, you do wonder whose side he will now be on.
