Why Warner Bros Is The Perfect Home For James Bond

This week The Hollywood Reporter reported MGM is looking at the possibility of being up for sale after the studio sacked their CEO Gary Barber and they’re using James Bond as bait for a potential billion-dollar bid.

THR stated that Megan Ellison’s Annapurna was going to handle the domestic rights in the US for the franchise, but their insiders have revealed that isn’t the case with Warner Bros’ Kevin Tsujhara to be the frontrunner.

This isn’t a surprise to me as I believe Warner Bros is the perfect home for James Bond (and likely MGM studio as a whole) for many reasons to kick-off a brand-new franchise starting from Bond 26.

IMAGE VIA MGM

IMAGE VIA WARNER BROS

Firstly, WB has been the international distributor for few MGM titles including Creed (and the upcoming Creed 2), The Hobbit, Everything Everything, How To Be Single and probably a lot more with most recent being Tomb Raider and it’ll be understandable if they handled Bond 25.

IMAGE VIA WARNER BROS/ MGM

The 007 brand is huge and with the financial backing of Warner would be a major boost to make the films bigger and with the studio having a list of acclaimed filmmakers. However, that won’t mean Tsujhara will have the last say because Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson have too much power over the character and have a decent track record take whatever he says seriously.

The obvious person to kick-off this brand-new Bond universe is Christopher Nolan as he’s always stated he would “love to make a Bond film at some point” and “think those producers – Barbara [Broccoli] and Michael [Wilson] – they do tremendous job” and that he’d want to begin a story to build from the ground up.

Once Nolan comes in and begins the new franchise it was important for this character to have different voices with Ben Affleck, Ryan Coolger and Patty Jenkins bring something new that we haven’t seen before.

If Nolan begins a brand new 007 story we’ll need a brand-new agent with Broccoli and Wilson draw up a shortlist of actors under 45 to carry the franchise through a number of films, this will mean no Idris Elba sorry.

The top four should be 32-year-old McMafia and Grantchester star James Norton (personally my top choice), David Oyelowo and Daniel Kaluuya, who are 42 and 29 years-old respectful and finally 34-year-old Aidan Turner.

Each four all have the Bond look, Norton has shown in the two shows above that he has everything going for him as the character. Likewise, watch Irishman Turner in the mini-series And Then There Were None.

Meanwhile, Kaluuya would bring a new younger audience and an incredible talent who could easily handle a franchise. Finally, Oyelowo is probably in the best position to take the role because of he starred in Othello on Broadway opposite Daniel Craig but the production was produced by Broccoli.

IMAGE VIA CHARLIE GREY/ VANITY FAIR

Oyelowo has the class to be Bond and even voiced the character in an audiobook.

Whoever they cast, they'll need to have a great villain to go toe-to-toe throughout the franchise and Chiwetel Ejiofor or Riz Ahmed would be fantastic big bads.

IMAGE VIA GETTY IMAGES

IMAGE VIA GETTY IMAGES

As you can see there’s no female up for the role because James Bond shouldn’t be played by a woman.

I’m sure I'd get shit for this and get held as a sexist, I’m not and here’s my reason why. Much like Tom Hardy doesn’t need the role the same goes for any actress and I’m proven right.

Charlize Theron was utterly kicked arse in Atomic Blonde and there needs to be a sequel, Taraji P. Henson starred in Proud Mary and Red Sparrow has recently come out with Jennifer Lawrence in the lead.

Additionally, there’s also no need to have a female Bond because you have an amazing actress in Naomie Harris as Moneypenny, so just make a spin-off with her when she was in the field.

Moneypenny and another spin-off focusing on the CIA with Felix, either bringing back Jeffrey Wright or cast someone new, which would be for the best, and the role could be taken by any actor/actress (probably following Wright) with a person of colour like Tessa Thompson, Eiza Gonzalez or Winston Duke.

These movies would be under the New Line banner and have indie directors come in as a stepping stone to bigger projects like Bond, superheroes, Star Wars etc.

The other benefits to Warner Bros bringing Bond on board are Charlie Higson's Young Bond books could be turned into either a brilliant animated series or series of films and let the team behind the LEGO films handle them led by Dan Lin and Chris McKay.

Finally, we could have a series of games like the Batman Arkham series with either Warner Bros games or even better Rocksteady take the reins.