The next feature-length addition to the James Bond franchise will be the 26th official movie in the series, and although there is currently very little information on the upcoming project, it runs the risk of tying or even breaking an unwanted record that has stood unchallenged within the 007 cinematic saga for two decades. While it wouldn’t necessarily hurt the currently untitled Bond movie, it does highlight the notable changes that have been going on behind the scenes.
The next James Bond actor hasn’t yet been announced, but the movie in which he’ll star has snagged Dune‘s Denis Villeneuve as its director, and Peaky Blinders‘ Steven Knight will be penning the script. The longer the wait becomes for James Bond 26, the more agonizing it gets. The franchise has often championed consistent output, making the upcoming effort a notable outlier. That said, fans have been made to wait for even longer before now.
The Next ‘James Bond’ Movie Could Set A New Record For The Gap Between Release Dates
No Time to Die, Daniel Craig’s final appearance as James Bond, recently marked its fourth anniversary. In October of next year, it will have been half a decade since its 2021 premiere. If a new 007 movie doesn’t materialize by then, which is looking incredibly likely, then a 2027 or even 2028 release looks plausible. Should Bond 26 take until late 2027 to hit cinema screens, then it would have been six years since No Time to Die premiered. Conversely, a 2028 release date would mean a staggering seven-year gap between installments.
The current record exists in the null space between Timothy Dalton’s final Bond movie, 1989’s License to Kill, and Pierce Brosnan’s franchise debut in 1995’s GoldenEye. A similar gap also separates 2015’s Spectre and 2021’s No Time to Die. As such, Bond 26 is right on the cusp of matching or surpassing the length of this delay. Given the immense success of Daniel Craig’s era, which was the first to act as a solid cinematic reboot of the franchise, it’s not that tricky to understand why the figures behind the series are taking so long to work out the best route forward.
If anything, it’s arguably a good thing that they’re taking their time in working out the best way to proceed. That doesn’t mean it’s not a frustrating wait, though. The silver lining to this delay is that it’s likely to be a record that’s unlikely to ever be beaten, at least for the foreseeable future. Once a new leading man has been chosen to be the face of the James Bond franchise for the next era, Amazon MGM will invariably want to make up for lost time by focusing on consistent cinematic output, mirroring the tasteful urgency that generally helped to define previous eras.
Delays Between ‘James Bond’ Movies Could Eventually Stop Being Such A Big Deal
Although the Bond movies began as a series of books by Ian Fleming, the live-action adaptations have inarguably eclipsed the source material on which they’re based. Now, the iconic film series is the first thing that comes to mind whenever anyone mentions James Bond, even for those who aren’t particularly into the spy saga. This is generally expected to be the case in years to come, but with the way the movie industry continues to transform, paired with some interesting behind-the-scenes changes, the arrival of a new James Bond film could easily stop being the landmark that it currently is.
With Barbara Broccoli surrendering control of the James Bond franchise earlier this year, Amazon MGM now has immense freedom when it comes to what projects it can put into production. Broccoli had a reputation for safeguarding James Bond in a way that was often interpreted by some fans as overly restrictive, but her decisions did at least stop an endless slew of movies and TV shows based on Fleming’s literary works, which would have watered down how special it is when 007 returns to the big screen. Moving forward, it’s not completely unreasonable to assume that Amazon MGM will make more use of its control over James Bond than Broccoli did.
While it’s unlikely that Bond movies will ever stop being made, it wouldn’t be unexpected if various TV shows and spinoffs started to appear to flesh out the new era that’s about to begin. If so, then there will be plenty of content to keep fans satisfied while they wait for another feature-length installment to come around. A multi-year gap would be far more tolerable if this framework were adopted, but it would admittedly make the arrival of new movies a little less special.
Alternatively, Bond could become similar to other cinematic franchises, such as the MCU, that have multiple big-screen releases each year, or at least one per year. Should this happen, then it would actually be a quiet homage to the series’ inaugural efforts. During the Sean Connery era, there was a new movie every year between 1962 and 1965, and that release rate was only ever replicated for Roger Moore’s first two appearances in 1973 and 1974. With modern filmmaking advances and a possible focus on a James Bond cinematic universe, allowing this rapid-fire release pattern to once more be the norm for the franchise is certainly not an impossibility.