The James Bond rumor mill is out of control. With Daniel Craig having said farewell to 007 in explosive fashion in 2021’s No Time to Die there’s a vacancy at MI6. The thing is, EON and MGM are taking their sweet time to announce a replacement. This information vacuum about Bond’s future has led to a huge amount of gossip, with everyone from Harry Styles, Taron Egerton, Idris Elba, Tom Hardy, and Regé-Jean Page supposedly up for the part.
But the latest eyebrow-raising name connected with Bond is Fleabag and Indiana Jone and the Dial of Destiny star Phoebe Waller-Bridge. In 2021 the British actor walked away from a TV adaptation of Mr and Mrs Smith at Amazon, citing creative differences with her co-star Donald Glover.
But with that one pair of spies behind her, could she return to the world of espionage to direct the next Bond movie? In an interview with The Independent Waller-Bridge points out her directing experience is limited to a single music video and laughs off the prospect, saying:
“My mum sent me that rumor too. So the obvious leap is James Bond.”
EON runs a very tight ship when it comes to Bond, so we suspect we won’t be hearing anything about the future of Bond until Barbara Broccoli is ready to tell us.
Even so, we’re hopeful for a break from the Daniel Craig era and for Bond to strike out into a new future and fresh continuity. And as for who’ll be picking up that Walther PPK? We suspect that, like Craig’s reveal in 2005, it’ll be a relatively unknown but talented actor who’ll immediately be at the center of fierce controversy.