Published Jun 19, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT
Chris is a Senior News Writer for Collider. He can be found in an IMAX screen, with his eyes watering and his ears bleeding for his own pleasure. He joined the news team in 2022 and accidentally fell upwards into a senior position despite his best efforts.
For reasons unknown, he enjoys analyzing box office receipts, giant sharks, and has become known as the go-to man for all things Bosch, Mission: Impossible and Christopher Nolan in Collider’s news division. Recently, he found himself yeehawing along to the Dutton saga on the Yellowstone Ranch.
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It feels like we’ve been speculating about James Bond for years at this point. Maybe we have. We know exactly what we expect from 007 by now: he drinks Martinis (shaken, not stirred); he drives Aston Martins; and he loves a quip or two. The identity of the newest Bond, though, has been up in the air for some time. However, we have just discovered at long-last who the newest actor to wield that License to Kill will be. The next James Bond story is coming — and it’s coming later this year.
Isaac Rouse will play James Bond in Young Bond: SilverFin, with Charlotte McBurney cast as Wilder Lawless. The new audio drama begins releasing in October 2026 and will adapt Charlie Higson’s first ***Young Bond ***novel across 16 half-hour episodes, split into two box sets for roughly eight hours of drama. More than 500 actors applied for the role of Bond, with 12 finalists brought in to audition. Writer-director Barnaby Edwards was clearly happy with the final choice, saying, “Nobody does it better.” Nice.
Rouse is known for television projects including The Crown, Get Even, and Genius, while he also played Charlie Bucket in Sam Mendes’ stage adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Mendes, of course, later directed Skyfall and Spectre, so clearly there’s something like kismet at play here.
McBurney joins Rouse in the cast, and she’s got quite the pedigree when it comes to voice acting performances. She’s previously earned a BAFTA nomination for her work on the A Plague Tale video game series and has also appeared in Final Fantasy XVI.
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.
The story follows James Bond in his teenage years, long before he became the most polished spy in MI6 history or the “sexist, misogynistic dinosaur” that he is so lovingly described as by Judi Dench’s M in the films. Higson’s Young Bond books explore Bond’s time at the prestigious Eton College, where he learned how to be a smarmy little git, we assume. The new adaptation comes from Big Finish Productions, which has produced full-cast audio dramas across major franchises for years. Young Bond: SilverFin will be available in collectible pre-order packages ahead of its October launch.
The first Young Bond: SilverFin episodes arrive in October 2026.
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Cary Joji Fukunaga
Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Cary Joji Fukunaga, Phoebe Waller-Bridge