When Amazon purchased the legendary Hollywood studio MGM for $8.5 billion back in 2022, they found themselves in the James Bond business, as the Bond franchise was set up at MGM – and they wanted to start making Bond movies as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, creative disagreements between Amazon MGM Studios and producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, who inherited the Bond franchise from original producer Albert R. Broccoli, slowed down the process. So, earlier this year Amazon paid off Wilson and Broccoli (reported price: another $1 billion) so they can gain creative control over the franchise for the foreseeable future, hiring Amy Pascal of Pascal Pictures and David Heyman of Heyday Films to produce the next Bond film. Now, they need to find an actor to play James Bond. There are plenty of rumors floating around, with Aaron Taylor-Johnson being the focus of some of the most intense ones – but apparently the role has not been cast just yet. And industry scooper Daniel Richtman hears there’s another Aaron in the running, as Aaron Pierre is rumored to be one of the actors being considered for Bond.
Pierre’s previous credits include playing Dev-Em on 20 episodes of the DC / Syfy show Krypton, Caesar in the Prime Video miniseries The Underground Railroad, and Malcolm X on 8 episodes of the Hulu / Disney+ series Genius. He was also Mid-Sized Sedan in M. Night Shyamalan’s Old, provided the voice of Mufasa in Mufasa: The Lion King, and caught a lot of positive attention for his performance in the Netflix movie Rebel Ridge. Coming up, he’ll be seen playing the Green Lantern named John Stewart in the DC / HBO series Lanterns.
There has been speculation that the Amazon takeover could open the door to Bond fan Christopher Nolan finally getting to make a Bond movie, as he demands “final cut” on his films and Nolan getting final cut on a Bond movie was never going to happen under Broccoli’s watch… but Nolan is currently busy working on the epic fantasy film The Odyssey, which is likely to keep him tied up until next summer (the film has a July 17, 2026 release date), and Amazon didn’t pay $1 billion so they can twiddle their thumbs while waiting over a year for Nolan’s schedule to clear up, especially when they’ve already been sitting on the Bond franchise for three years. So the producers are looking for someone else to take the helm. It was strongly rumored that Heyman’s top choice for director would be Children of Men director Alfonso Cuarón, who he worked with on Gravity and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. (And Cuarón has said that Prisoner of Azkaban was “the best experience making a film I ever had.”) For a while, it seemed likely that Cuarón, who has said that he was offered the chance to make another Bond movie “ages ago,” would end up making this movie, but more recent rumors indicated that he had ended up passing on the project (just as he passed on Bond before).
We’ll have to keep waiting to see who will end up directing the new James Bond movie, and who will end up being the latest actor to play 007. In the meantime, let us know: what do you think of the idea of Aaron Pierre playing James Bond?
