I think it's possible. I guess he wouldn't have become a fan of the Bond films without knowing what they are. I'm sure he won't give us a totally trad Bond film as there's not much point in hiring Denis Villeneuve unless you want a Denis Villeneuve film, but I doubt he'll be looking to make something which is unrecognisable as a Bond film, which means a lightness of touch here and there.
So, if the next Dune isn't released until end of 26', we are looking at the next Bond movie in 27. With that, we may have to wait a while before the next Bond actor is released. My logic is that Amazon isn't going to announce the actor, get everyone excited, and then wait a year plus to film. Craig was announced in the fall of 05, with CR coming out about a year later.
If I may chime in, I am very excited about the choice of Villeneuve as the director of the next Bond film. I have seen most of his movies, and I have enjoyed them all, especially Sicario. I see in the comments that several folks are concerned that Villeneuve’s Bond movie might be devoid of humor, but I don’t think that will necessarily be the case. That being said, I happen to be more of a fan of the Bond movies with a more serious tone, with a few bits of humor thrown in here and there. I think FRWL is a good example. I realize we’re at least a couple of years away from seeing Bond on screen again, but I am really looking forward to seeing what Amazon and DV do with our favorite gentleman spy!
For me, it's less a concern of their being a lack of humour - hell, No Time to Die had plenty of it - moreso I don't want the overall tone to be a continuation of the self-important, naval-gazing dourness Mendes established.
It has been incredibly vogue for the last 20 years in mainstream blockbusters, to feature perpetually anguished protagonists whispering po-faced babble about "choices" and "destiny". I just want an honest to goodness mission without the cod-philosophical emo factor, constant self-referential ponderousness about spies being outdated and irrelevant "becuz com-puters", as Jen from the IT Crowd would say, or overwrought melodrama.
Agreed. As part of that repudiation, it's time to end the tentative, ponderously moaning arrangement of bars of the Bond theme as played over the studio logos at the beginning of the Babs/Craig Bond films (the 'The Name's Bond... James Bond'/ 'Breadcrumbs' legacy)... and instead to open with an on-the-nose, 60s-style fanfare/gunbarrel, without any slurring into it!
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
For me, it's less a concern of their being a lack of humour - hell, No Time to Die had plenty of it - moreso I don't want the overall tone to be a continuation of the self-important, naval-gazing dourness Mendes established.
Personally I'd say Mendes' films had more fun and silliness than the two films immediately preceding them did. There wasn't much in the way of the like of the comedy Tube couple in Casino Royale.
This is true, but the style Mendes brought, in my opinion, was one of baffling tonal inconsistency.
You could argue the series is no stranger to this historically, such as in FYEO, with its throwing Blofeld down a chimney, attack by ice hockey team or Margaret Thatcher cameo, but the difference is those films never hinged on their emotional stakes or thematic resonance.
The latter Craig films wanted its audience to be deeply emotionally moved by its themes, its narrative poignancy; to feel the franchise had transcended its former image of 'disposable' popcorn cinema and instead become respectable, poignant, award-worthy 'art'.
Personally, this is the polar opposite of what I want Bond to be, but that's besides the point. If indeed they wanted to forge this path sincerely, they should've dispensed with the gags altogether, because the ones they tossed in were embarrassingly dissonant with the overall solemn, self-serious tone.
Casino Royale was a grounded spy-thriller, but it wasn't ponderous in the same way as SF / SP, and the humour, while sparse, was more subtle and intelligent thanks to a much sharper script. Hell, say what you want about QoS and the writers' strike, but the hotel switching and "teachers on sabbatical" stuff is way more Bond than the frankly cringeworthy "he's keen to get home!", "go on, eject me!", and Dave Batista's "****!" to camera, seconds before getting yoinked off a train carriage.
Or course, this is all subjective but if you're going to take me out of a film with low hanging fruit attempts at baffling comedy, don't expect me to be wrapped up with Bond's existential despair and neverending trauma for the majority of the runtime.
In essence, my preference is for the series return to being breezer action-adventures without being bogged down in laborious self-referential introspection and melodrama. It's not that the humour needs to be radically ramped up, just that the pomposity needs dialling down to pre-2012 levels.
Well Jacob Elordi would be my choice after watching Saltburn - he's very good in it - but someone pointed out he's 6ft 5 and come to think of it he does spend a lot of the film either sitting down or lying down, you don't see many scenes where he's just standing around other people normally, we'd be going from a short rrrrs (Craig) to a beanstalk. Mind you, I did read somewhere that Connery was actually 6ft 4 so who's to say.
It's strange, the young lads of school leaving age I work with are very tall, may of them, I mean that's evolution.
I feel like there’s a lot of hyperbole going on there. Skyfall is hardly melodramatic, it’s just got a bit of drama in. And I’d say the jokes and winks are very much in the tradition of previous Bond films, slot in perfectly and don’t disturb the flow at all. I’d say the tone of SF and SP is much more of a traditional Bond film than the two before, I thought they were a great updating of the series.
One thing DV is very good at that will be a strength when making Bond26 is how he uses locations. He deep-dives into foreign locations and spends time showing it to the audience. This is something Fleming did very well too. In Siccario it's the drug war by the US-Mexico border. In Arrival learning the language and culture of the aliens is one of the two themes of the movie. In Dune we see Paul Attrides get to know the planet Arrakis and learn the culture of the Fremen. In many Bond movies a new country is just a couple of establishing shots before an action scene starts. Sometimes I get the feeling travel is mostly to avoid having the audience think "Why is Bond still in the UK?". With DV we won't get that.
"teachers on sabbatical" is the best joke in the Craig era...and probably even a couple of other eras. It's almost perfect because it isn't a joke or a 4th wall smasher, it's entirely in character and very witty shortly to be replaced with pathos as it's also signing the death warrant of Agent Fields, hers was not a winning lottery ticket. Interesting to me that that came in a writers strike.
Perhaps a little too harsh on the Mendes entries; 'Go on eject me' comes shortly after...'and I suppose that's completely inconspicuous'...which got the British press to laugh out loud en masse at the press premier I was lucky enough to attend...which means it is probably eligible for some sort of Nobel prize.
Villenueve will make a "dark" and "big" Bond film for sure. His recent movies have all been "big" sci-fi projects. Before that it was "dark" and unsavoury thrillers. I have not seem any of his French language films. I have a feeling we will be in for a dark and big spectacle of too long a length. I don't think Villenueve over indulges, but there is not much to enjoy in most of hid output. We will see. At least we have movement so let us be thankful for that.
One really little one I liked was Albert Finney calling M ‘Emma’. But there’s loads of good gags in them. Bond waving at the baddies, telling that security guard to ‘stay’, Q pretending he hadn’t seen Bond was back in front of M, most of Ana De Amas’ lines… loads of funny moments.
From Russia With Love is a real spy thriller yet just about every line is comic gold, mainly it is the deft, light touch that prevails and many of the recent movies have directors who just don't do that, so while some gags have been mentioned, imo it's sonly Spectre that delivered them, and it's a film in which Craig's Bond mainly seems to be enjoying himself.
I did pick up on a lot of those jokes but they seemed to fall in a fog of misery for me. The tone of a movie, the lightness, the setting up of a gag seems down to the director to me, maybe also the cinematographer. After all, SP was lensed by someone other than Deakins, who brought a sombre misery to films like SF and Road to Perdition.
I realise those maudlin French-horned coffins are bleak but went to the 10th anniversary and 60th screenings of SF at BFI Imax and the silhouette fight with Patrice still looks like no other moment Bond has had on screen and is dynamic and vibrant. Sometimes sombre misery is just Scotland! 🤣
Wasn't expecting Amazon to go with Villeneuve, EON had their sites locked on him over a year ago. Seems they're still pulling strings behind the scenes.
I agree. I don't expect the actor to be announced until close to the start of filming. The Variety article suggesting a 2028 release date doesn't seem right to me, and I think DV has plenty of time to film Dune: Messiah this summer while the script is being written and then he can be talking to Amazon and the producers about the script while he does post-production on Messiah and then he goes into pre-production on Bond26 in late 2026 with filming starting in January 2027. So, I don't see an actor being announced until the fourth quarter of 2026. They need to take a lot of time finding the next Bond, it's so important, they don't want another Lazenby situation or someone who isn't enthusiastically embraced by the mass audience like Dalton. Dalton is my favorite Bond actor but the box office for his films speaks for itself.
Spielberg made Schindler's List and Jurassic Park pretty much at the same time. Matbe DV films Dune Messiah this summer, then works on post-production (editing, CGI, score) on that while he does pre-production on Bond26 at the same time?
What I think we can glean from this about DV's approach is that he storyboards all his movies after he gets the script and then he "re-writes" the script with the storyboard, he talks about his process at just about 4 minutes 40 seconds in. He uses a professional storyboarder to work with. Whether or not this would substantially increase his preparation time, pushing Bond26 filming further into 2027, is an open question.
At 12 minutes into the video he appears to express a preference for the emotional storyline, when CJF talks about Barbara and Daniel Craig wanting that. Earlier in the video he talks about Craig revitalizing the franchise and also calls it a "rebirth".
At 33 minutes, they talk about production design and it is clearly important to DV that Bond films' production design respect the "tradition" of the Bond films.
They talk about meeting for dinner at the end and I would imagine now that DV has the gig, that dinner will definitely be happening.
I don't have the foggiest notion of what to expect from a Villeneuve treatment, but the scriptwriter they bring in to flesh out the idea will be shouldering a lot of weight, I'd say. It makes sense, I think, to look at who Denis has worked with in the past. If he has a say in choosing his writing partner, common sense suggests it will be someone with whom he is very familiar.
I thank Purvis and Wade for the years of service and would give them both gold watches if I could. But to me, they had run their races. Bond needs a new generation of writers.
They can use who worked on Dune since one hopes the writing is done by now. Eric Roth worked on the first one. He also has written for Scorsese. He wrote Insider, Munich, Ali, Benjamin Button, Forrest Gump, The good Shepherd and many more.
I think very few people expected Purvis & Wade to come back. We know how they build a plot, and most of the time, the first half is far better than the second imo. The next film needs to be very solid plotwise.
Comments
Maybe. After all Kubrick made Dr Strangelove.
I think it's possible. I guess he wouldn't have become a fan of the Bond films without knowing what they are. I'm sure he won't give us a totally trad Bond film as there's not much point in hiring Denis Villeneuve unless you want a Denis Villeneuve film, but I doubt he'll be looking to make something which is unrecognisable as a Bond film, which means a lightness of touch here and there.
So, if the next Dune isn't released until end of 26', we are looking at the next Bond movie in 27. With that, we may have to wait a while before the next Bond actor is released. My logic is that Amazon isn't going to announce the actor, get everyone excited, and then wait a year plus to film. Craig was announced in the fall of 05, with CR coming out about a year later.
If I may chime in, I am very excited about the choice of Villeneuve as the director of the next Bond film. I have seen most of his movies, and I have enjoyed them all, especially Sicario. I see in the comments that several folks are concerned that Villeneuve’s Bond movie might be devoid of humor, but I don’t think that will necessarily be the case. That being said, I happen to be more of a fan of the Bond movies with a more serious tone, with a few bits of humor thrown in here and there. I think FRWL is a good example. I realize we’re at least a couple of years away from seeing Bond on screen again, but I am really looking forward to seeing what Amazon and DV do with our favorite gentleman spy!
For me, it's less a concern of their being a lack of humour - hell, No Time to Die had plenty of it - moreso I don't want the overall tone to be a continuation of the self-important, naval-gazing dourness Mendes established.
It has been incredibly vogue for the last 20 years in mainstream blockbusters, to feature perpetually anguished protagonists whispering po-faced babble about "choices" and "destiny". I just want an honest to goodness mission without the cod-philosophical emo factor, constant self-referential ponderousness about spies being outdated and irrelevant "becuz com-puters", as Jen from the IT Crowd would say, or overwrought melodrama.
Agreed. As part of that repudiation, it's time to end the tentative, ponderously moaning arrangement of bars of the Bond theme as played over the studio logos at the beginning of the Babs/Craig Bond films (the 'The Name's Bond... James Bond'/ 'Breadcrumbs' legacy)... and instead to open with an on-the-nose, 60s-style fanfare/gunbarrel, without any slurring into it!
I'd like to congratulate everyone for not writing "This means Timothée Chalamet will be the next james Bond" or words to that effect. 👍️
For me, it's less a concern of their being a lack of humour - hell, No Time to Die had plenty of it - moreso I don't want the overall tone to be a continuation of the self-important, naval-gazing dourness Mendes established.
Personally I'd say Mendes' films had more fun and silliness than the two films immediately preceding them did. There wasn't much in the way of the like of the comedy Tube couple in Casino Royale.
This is true, but the style Mendes brought, in my opinion, was one of baffling tonal inconsistency.
You could argue the series is no stranger to this historically, such as in FYEO, with its throwing Blofeld down a chimney, attack by ice hockey team or Margaret Thatcher cameo, but the difference is those films never hinged on their emotional stakes or thematic resonance.
The latter Craig films wanted its audience to be deeply emotionally moved by its themes, its narrative poignancy; to feel the franchise had transcended its former image of 'disposable' popcorn cinema and instead become respectable, poignant, award-worthy 'art'.
Personally, this is the polar opposite of what I want Bond to be, but that's besides the point. If indeed they wanted to forge this path sincerely, they should've dispensed with the gags altogether, because the ones they tossed in were embarrassingly dissonant with the overall solemn, self-serious tone.
Casino Royale was a grounded spy-thriller, but it wasn't ponderous in the same way as SF / SP, and the humour, while sparse, was more subtle and intelligent thanks to a much sharper script. Hell, say what you want about QoS and the writers' strike, but the hotel switching and "teachers on sabbatical" stuff is way more Bond than the frankly cringeworthy "he's keen to get home!", "go on, eject me!", and Dave Batista's "****!" to camera, seconds before getting yoinked off a train carriage.
Or course, this is all subjective but if you're going to take me out of a film with low hanging fruit attempts at baffling comedy, don't expect me to be wrapped up with Bond's existential despair and neverending trauma for the majority of the runtime.
In essence, my preference is for the series return to being breezer action-adventures without being bogged down in laborious self-referential introspection and melodrama. It's not that the humour needs to be radically ramped up, just that the pomposity needs dialling down to pre-2012 levels.
In my inevitable comment I managed to resist that, you'll be pleased to know.
Well Jacob Elordi would be my choice after watching Saltburn - he's very good in it - but someone pointed out he's 6ft 5 and come to think of it he does spend a lot of the film either sitting down or lying down, you don't see many scenes where he's just standing around other people normally, we'd be going from a short rrrrs (Craig) to a beanstalk. Mind you, I did read somewhere that Connery was actually 6ft 4 so who's to say.
It's strange, the young lads of school leaving age I work with are very tall, may of them, I mean that's evolution.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I feel like there’s a lot of hyperbole going on there. Skyfall is hardly melodramatic, it’s just got a bit of drama in. And I’d say the jokes and winks are very much in the tradition of previous Bond films, slot in perfectly and don’t disturb the flow at all. I’d say the tone of SF and SP is much more of a traditional Bond film than the two before, I thought they were a great updating of the series.
One thing DV is very good at that will be a strength when making Bond26 is how he uses locations. He deep-dives into foreign locations and spends time showing it to the audience. This is something Fleming did very well too. In Siccario it's the drug war by the US-Mexico border. In Arrival learning the language and culture of the aliens is one of the two themes of the movie. In Dune we see Paul Attrides get to know the planet Arrakis and learn the culture of the Fremen. In many Bond movies a new country is just a couple of establishing shots before an action scene starts. Sometimes I get the feeling travel is mostly to avoid having the audience think "Why is Bond still in the UK?". With DV we won't get that.
"teachers on sabbatical" is the best joke in the Craig era...and probably even a couple of other eras. It's almost perfect because it isn't a joke or a 4th wall smasher, it's entirely in character and very witty shortly to be replaced with pathos as it's also signing the death warrant of Agent Fields, hers was not a winning lottery ticket. Interesting to me that that came in a writers strike.
Perhaps a little too harsh on the Mendes entries; 'Go on eject me' comes shortly after...'and I suppose that's completely inconspicuous'...which got the British press to laugh out loud en masse at the press premier I was lucky enough to attend...which means it is probably eligible for some sort of Nobel prize.
"That last hand nearly killed me ...."
"You know what C stands for, don't you?"
The delivery of "Bond ......... James Bond" when he returns to MI6 in NTTD.
“Do me a favour, will you? Throw that down the toilet and cut out the middleman.”
I think these are really funny too. The CraigBond movies had humor, but it was rarer, smarter and more hard-hitting than much of what came before.
Villenueve will make a "dark" and "big" Bond film for sure. His recent movies have all been "big" sci-fi projects. Before that it was "dark" and unsavoury thrillers. I have not seem any of his French language films. I have a feeling we will be in for a dark and big spectacle of too long a length. I don't think Villenueve over indulges, but there is not much to enjoy in most of hid output. We will see. At least we have movement so let us be thankful for that.
One really little one I liked was Albert Finney calling M ‘Emma’. But there’s loads of good gags in them. Bond waving at the baddies, telling that security guard to ‘stay’, Q pretending he hadn’t seen Bond was back in front of M, most of Ana De Amas’ lines… loads of funny moments.
From Russia With Love is a real spy thriller yet just about every line is comic gold, mainly it is the deft, light touch that prevails and many of the recent movies have directors who just don't do that, so while some gags have been mentioned, imo it's sonly Spectre that delivered them, and it's a film in which Craig's Bond mainly seems to be enjoying himself.
I did pick up on a lot of those jokes but they seemed to fall in a fog of misery for me. The tone of a movie, the lightness, the setting up of a gag seems down to the director to me, maybe also the cinematographer. After all, SP was lensed by someone other than Deakins, who brought a sombre misery to films like SF and Road to Perdition.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I realise those maudlin French-horned coffins are bleak but went to the 10th anniversary and 60th screenings of SF at BFI Imax and the silhouette fight with Patrice still looks like no other moment Bond has had on screen and is dynamic and vibrant. Sometimes sombre misery is just Scotland! 🤣
Wasn't expecting Amazon to go with Villeneuve, EON had their sites locked on him over a year ago. Seems they're still pulling strings behind the scenes.
I agree. I don't expect the actor to be announced until close to the start of filming. The Variety article suggesting a 2028 release date doesn't seem right to me, and I think DV has plenty of time to film Dune: Messiah this summer while the script is being written and then he can be talking to Amazon and the producers about the script while he does post-production on Messiah and then he goes into pre-production on Bond26 in late 2026 with filming starting in January 2027. So, I don't see an actor being announced until the fourth quarter of 2026. They need to take a lot of time finding the next Bond, it's so important, they don't want another Lazenby situation or someone who isn't enthusiastically embraced by the mass audience like Dalton. Dalton is my favorite Bond actor but the box office for his films speaks for itself.
Spielberg made Schindler's List and Jurassic Park pretty much at the same time. Matbe DV films Dune Messiah this summer, then works on post-production (editing, CGI, score) on that while he does pre-production on Bond26 at the same time?
My dream is Bond26 premiere in November 2027. 🤗
Denis Villeneuve interviewed Cary Joji Fukunaga for 40mins for NTTD publicity.
What I think we can glean from this about DV's approach is that he storyboards all his movies after he gets the script and then he "re-writes" the script with the storyboard, he talks about his process at just about 4 minutes 40 seconds in. He uses a professional storyboarder to work with. Whether or not this would substantially increase his preparation time, pushing Bond26 filming further into 2027, is an open question.
At 12 minutes into the video he appears to express a preference for the emotional storyline, when CJF talks about Barbara and Daniel Craig wanting that. Earlier in the video he talks about Craig revitalizing the franchise and also calls it a "rebirth".
At 33 minutes, they talk about production design and it is clearly important to DV that Bond films' production design respect the "tradition" of the Bond films.
They talk about meeting for dinner at the end and I would imagine now that DV has the gig, that dinner will definitely be happening.
Great find!
Here are some interesting news from World of Reel. (If it's correct. This isn't gospel)
Denis Villeneuve Will Only Direct One Bond Film, Without Final Cut — World of Reel
I don't have the foggiest notion of what to expect from a Villeneuve treatment, but the scriptwriter they bring in to flesh out the idea will be shouldering a lot of weight, I'd say. It makes sense, I think, to look at who Denis has worked with in the past. If he has a say in choosing his writing partner, common sense suggests it will be someone with whom he is very familiar.
I thank Purvis and Wade for the years of service and would give them both gold watches if I could. But to me, they had run their races. Bond needs a new generation of writers.
They can use who worked on Dune since one hopes the writing is done by now. Eric Roth worked on the first one. He also has written for Scorsese. He wrote Insider, Munich, Ali, Benjamin Button, Forrest Gump, The good Shepherd and many more.
I don't think DV has worked with a British screenwriter. You'd think a British writer would help getting the British characters' sound right.
Jane Goldman (Kingsman, Kick-ass, The Debt, Stardust) or Phobee Waller-Bridge comes to mind.
I think very few people expected Purvis & Wade to come back. We know how they build a plot, and most of the time, the first half is far better than the second imo. The next film needs to be very solid plotwise.