James Bond fans are on top of the world right now thanks to the franchise’s first new release since 2021’s No Time to Die. The world’s greatest spy will officially return later this month in the new video game, 007 First Light, which is being developed by IO Interactive, the same studio that has delivered the critically acclaimed Hitman games to the world. 007 First Light stars Patrick Gibson as the new James Bond, fresh off playing a young Dexter Morgan in the Paramount Plus original series, Dexter: Original Sin, which was canceled after only one season. The game is launching around the world later this month on May 27, and it’s expected to be one of the biggest games of the year — reports indicate it could be a favorite for Game of the Year when the time comes.
However, the James Bond project that has everyone talking right now is Amazon’s new 007 film, which is being directed by Denis Villeneuve (Dune: Part Two) with a script from Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders). Plot details about the new movie are being kept under wraps at the time of writing, but Amazon just confirmed earlier this week that the casting process for the film has officially begun. This has led fans to speculate heavily about who could be in line to take over the mantle of 007 from Daniel Craig, and we finally have an idea about what kind of star the studio is looking for. Despite Amazon insisting that details about the casting process would be kept private, casting director Nina Gold has come out in a new report and said that the studio is eyeing an actor who “oozes sex appeal,” and also that they are prioritizing someone who is “young enough to play him for three, four, or more pictures.”
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
Henry Cavill, famed for his role as Superman in Zack Snyder’s DCEU, has long been one of the more popular names thrown out to play the next James Bond. However, this new report and other rumors indicate that Amazon will look in a younger direction for its 007, **likely ruling out Cavill **and other popular, older names like Idris Elba. Betting sites have stars like Jacob Elordi (Euphoria) and Callum Turner (Masters of the Air) as the favorites to play the next 007, but the studio could shock the world and go with a completely different name.
Stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of the new James Bond movie in the works at Amazon.
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Cary Joji Fukunaga