The next actor to play James Bond has reportedly been “chosen” and will sign their contract this week.
Daniel Craig’s time as James Bond ended with 2021’s breathtaking No Time To Die, a definitive tenure-capper that wiped the secret agent’s slate cleaner than ever before.
Speculation over who’ll be the next star to don the tux has been rampant for years, even before Craig bowed out of the role. Henry Cavill, Idris Elba, and Tom Hardy have been firm mainstays on bookies’ lists — but there’s one actor who seems to be the best bet: Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
The Kick-Ass and Bullet Train star was first asked about playing 007 in an interview in early 2023, and he was suspiciously cryptic. Now, it’s been reported that he’s about to seal the deal.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson to “sign contract” to play James Bond
Taylor-Johnson has been “formally offered” the James Bond job, as reported by The Sun.
“Bond is Aaron’s job, should he wish to accept it. The formal offer is on the table and they are waiting to hear back,” a source told the tabloid.
“As far as Eon is concerned, Aaron is going to sign his contract in the coming days and they can start preparing for the big announcement.”
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As well as leading the Kick-Ass franchise in the early 2010s, Taylor-Johnson has also appeared in Godzilla, Nocturnal Animals, the MCU as Quicksilver, and he’ll star alongside Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt in The Fall Guy.
Speaking to Vanity Fair in February 2023, he said the Bond reports were “flattering… [but] you just want to stay in your lane, stay grounded, stay around the people that you love and love you back, and stay in that world. Because the moment you start believing the sh*t people say about you, you’ve lost your f**king mind. You’ve lost it.”
Updates regarding Bond 26’s development have been few and far between. In June 2022, longtime producer Barbara Broccoli said the next film was “at least two years” away from production — but late last year, she then told The Guardian: “There’s a big, big road ahead reinventing it for the next chapter and we haven’t even begun with that.”
Most recently, while appearing at the BFI Fellowship Awards, she said: “There’s nothing I can tell you about the next Bond film. There’s nothing. Nothing is happening yet.”
In the meantime, you find out everything else we know about James Bond 26, and why it’s time for Christopher Nolan to direct his own Bond movie.
