On the Entertainment Media's Coverage of "Bond 26"

It may seem odd that I am writing about the coverage of "Bond 26" rather than about the (as yet nonexistent but widely anticipated) movie itself. However, that coverage is itself odd--sufficiently so as to warrant some remark.

The reason is that the entertainment press keeps talking about the project--even though there is no actual news for them to report, let alone analyze. Either the producers are doing nothing at all, or the preparations are an extremely well-guarded secret. In either case the entertainment press is left with nothing to offer. Yet they keep talking--and in the process recycle the same speculations over and over and over again.

"Who will be the next James Bond?" they ask, and run through (mostly) the same list of candidates over and over again.

"What will the tone of the movies be like?" they ask. Will they stick with the more grounded material and darker, more "character"-oriented tone of the Daniel Craig era, or revert to the more flamboyant adventures of yore?

It was all actually talked to death around the time of Spectre--back in 2015. (You know, before the Trump presidency, before Brexit, before #MeToo, before the pandemic, before lots of things that can not unreasonably leave one feeling that the world has changed.) But the extreme delay in the release of that movie that from the first was expected to be Craig's last, No Time to Die, meant they just had nowhere else to go. And so has the fact that in the year since that movie hit theaters there has been so little for those claqueurs-posing-as-journalists tasked with sustaining public interest in the franchise.

Might that start to change soon? Certainly the film industry seems to be stabilizing, and along lines not much different from what prevailed before--small dramas and comedies ever less likely to be a theatrical draw, and ever more consistently relegated to streaming; but the big franchise action-adventure doing well, as demonstrated over the last year by hits like Spider-Man: No Way Home, Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water in particular, and likely to be further reconfirmed as we proceed through what looks like a thoroughly blockbuster-packed 2023. The result is that Hollywood will feel more confident about pouring its money into such projects as a new Bond film.

Still, that has only been part of the problem. It seems that No Time to Die was, to the extent that it did less well than some hoped (especially in North America), was held back not merely by the pandemic (undeniable a factor as it was), but also the franchise's plain and simple running down. This most venerable of high-concept action-adventure franchises--the one that can truly be credited with "starting it all"--is showing its considerable age, which if it were a person would have it looking forward to its pension a few years hence. Audiences were less interested, with this going especially for the younger age cohorts for which nostalgia plays less part, and the tropes are less resonant (having grown up on superheroes rather than secret agents), in an ultra-crowded market where 007 appears ever less special (indeed, perhaps even less their favored secret agent hero than the now similarly-approaching-retirement-age gang from the Fast and the Furious franchise). This has likely played its part in the hesitations of the producers about proceeding--and I have no idea how far they may be along in moving past that to settle on just what approach with Bond 26 will get the public excited about 007 again (assuming, of course, that is not a bridge too far"), the more in as the budgets, and the grosses that alone can justify them, make such movies ever more a preposterous gamble for the backers.