"Do I look like I give a damn?"

Posted 4:30 AM by Gerald So

This Daniel Craig CASINO ROYALE quote is how I choose to react to the news Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli have sold creative control of the James Bond film franchise to Amazon MGM Studios.

It's bad news in that the movies will no longer have the personal touch that began with Cubby Broccoli, but I've also taken issue with how rigid the family has been, not in their depiction of Bond over the years, but with how the movies are written, produced, and directed. This breeds familiarity but not the most excitement.

Can impersonal corporate giant Amazon hype new Bond movies? I think it would be smart of them to retain some Broccoli flavor at least with their first movie. From there, they can branch out. The history of the Bond movies is a big part of why people get excited for them. It would be a waste if Amazon didn't tap into that.

Some worry that Bond will be spun off to death, dilluting the big screen movies. I don't know that that's a major problem. I'm primarily interested in the big screen movies and would continue watching them and leaving the rest, my approach to Star Wars. Meanwhile, though, smaller Bond-adjacent projects could make money to enhance the big screen movies. MGM alone had struggled with financing for decades. Original co-producer Harry Saltzman sold his stake when 1974's THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN underperformed.

Another concern is EON has mined Ian Fleming's twelve Bond books repeatedly already. Notice for Daniel Craig's run, they used Fleming titles CASINO ROYALE and QUANTUM OF SOLACE but Craig's five movies were really one prolonged story, not the usual varied adventures. SKYFALL's and SPECTRE's opening themes hinted at finality: "This is the end," "The writing's on the wall." These may have been signs EON was genuinely out of ideas.

Amazon may be more willing to tap post-Fleming sources such as John Gardner's or Raymond Benson's sequels or hire someone to write a wholly new, cutting-edge Bond screenplay. Amazon also doesn't need to take EON's approach of casting actors to play Bond for several movies. They could cast someone right for one movie, then cast someone else right for the next. Ultimately we'll see if Amazon can conjure Bond movie magic. I'll let you know if I feel it.