James Bond is about to enter uncertain waters, as Amazon.com, which purchased MGM four years ago for $8.5 billion, has now assumed creative control over the franchise.
Amazon reportedly paid an extra billion dollars just for the Bond films. What they craved, however, was creative control over the Bond brand. Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, the heads of Eon and custodians of everything related to James Bond, entered into a joint venture with Amazon MGM. The Broccolis will retain an ownership stake in Bond and his films, but Amazon MGM will be in the driver's seat creatively.
That means, in all likelihood, woke changes to the character, with possibly a female Bond, and certainly a Bond of a different color.
As it stands now, there is no script, no story, no lead character. And that's making Amazon MGM antsy.
Rumors have swirled for years that the Broccolis have clashed with Amazon over the direction of Bond. The family felt the e-commerce giant was a poor home for the elegant secret agent and bristled at its efforts to expand the scope of the franchise, while Amazon executives were frustrated by the glacial pace of getting a new film off the ground, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The company managed to get the Broccolis to sign off on a reality competition spinoff show, “007: Road to a Million,” but other attempts to revitalize the property have yet to bear fruit.
"Revitalize the property" is showbiz talk for bringing James Bond into the 21st century. Or, at least, the left's notion of "21st century."
“This is the next logical step for the Bond franchise. 007 is the crown jewel in Amazon’s library, and their best hope — in terms of IP — for continued box office success,” says Jeff Bock, an analyst with Exhibitor Relations. “With the old guard, for better or worse, productions took a long time to incubate. That just doesn’t cut it in today’s theatrical marketplace.”
The Broccolis treated each Bond film with a care rarely seen in the industry today. Their attention to detail was exquisite. But this didn't sit well with Amazon, which wants a quick return on its $8 billion investment.
And in this fractured media landscape, the whole notion of a franchise has changed to become more expansive. The Broccolis have largely resisted the changing times, focusing almost exclusively on crafting big screen installments that arrive within years of each other, and only after an exhaustive development process. With the family stepping back, Amazon and MGM can craft a larger cinematic universe — one potentially filled with television shows and film spinoffs in the vein of Marvel or Star Wars. In a sign of how different Amazon’s approach may be, founder Jeff Bezos was crowdsourcing on social media for suggestions of who should next play Bond shortly after Thursday’s deal was announced.
“You can really reimagine this series,” says Eric Handler, senior media and entertainment analyst at Roth Capital Partners. “Now, Amazon can maybe stay on a linear track with the films, but maybe they create a streaming series about Moneypenny or tell an origin story about Q. Do they have Ana de Armas’s character from ‘No Time to Die’ appear in a separate movie? It’s all possible.”
Which "Q" origin story? Desmond Llewelyn, the brilliant and creative but always exasperated "Q" from 17 Bond films? Or the smart-alecky, GenX know-it-all Ben Whishaw of more recent vintage?
We've all probably seen a "reimagined" Shakespeare. Some of them are pretty good. "Hamlet" with New York City as a backdrop was pretty awesome. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" set in 19th century England was also good.
It's not "reimaging" or "revitalizing the property" that's the problem. It's what Amazon MGM is going to do with Bond. He's certainly not going to quaff down martinis. Or smoke cigarettes, as Sean Connery did in the early films of the franchise. If it's a female Bond, they can't make her seductive, or every feminist in Christendom will be on their case.
The franchise films have made $7 billion, with hundreds of millions of dollars more in toys, lunch boxes, games, and other branded 007 products. I had an Aston Martin slot car on my circuit.
What if most people like the way Bond has been presented for the last 60+ years? I will definitely wait for the film to come to premium TV before watching it.
It's hard to spend $30 or $40 with a date to see some horrible woke version of the iconic male figure of the 20th century.