Not yet James Bond's Time to Die: can 007 survive his latest big-screen chapter?

After production of the most recent film No Time to Die (2021) was delayed first by the hiring and firing of first-choice director Danny Boyle and writer John Hodge in 2018, and then again by the Covid-19 pandemic that pushed its release date back by several months, it has now been four years and counting since audiences witnessed Daniel Craig’s protracted goodbye to the role of 007. These unexpected interruptions also meant that the six years between No Time to Die and its predecessor Spectre (2015) was the longest Bond had been missing from cinema screens since Pierce Brosnan’s debut in the role with GoldenEye (1995), which similarly came six years after Timothy Dalton’s second and final Bond film, Licence to Kill, in 1989.

Speculation about Bond’s future further intensified when Amazon MGM announced in February 2025 that it had gained full creative control of the franchise after 60 years in the care of Eon Productions, prompting both industry insiders and 007 fansites to question whether Bond would – and perhaps could – continue when having to jostle for supremacy again Jason Bourne, John Wick, Ethan Hunt, and other action hero copycats.

With only two Bond films released in the past decade (compared with the previous cycle of one every two or three years between 1961 and 1989), bringing high-profile director like Villeneuve into the Bond fold – alongside the hiring of experienced producers Amy Pascal (Marvel) and David Heyman (Harry Potter) back in March – is certainly a statement of intent from 007’s new custodians. Eleven different directors have helmed the 25 official Bond features since the spy’s debut in the early 1960s, yet the position of Bond director has, like 007 himself, remained a lucrative, if tricky, role to inhabit. As the acclaimed author Sinclair McKay once playfully put it, directing a 007 feature is “not so much a job for an auteur as a circus ringmaster.”

After British film director and screenwriter Terence Young led three out of the first four Bond films – Dr. No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), and Thunderball (1965) – Lewis Gilbert, Peter R. Hunt, Guy Hamilton, John Glen, Martin Campbell, Roger Spottiswoode, Michael Apted, Lee Tamahori, and Marc Forster have all tried their hand at directorial duties with varying degrees of success. It is Glen who holds the record for the most Bond features, directing the five consecutive Bond films released throughout the 1980s and overseeing both the departure of Roger Moore and arrival of Dalton in the role of 007.

More recently, bankable filmmakers with Hollywood name recognition such as Sam Mendes and Cary Joji Fukunaga have taken on the last three instalments in the franchise, successfully navigating Bond through the second decade of the new millennium as the character fast approaches its 70th birthday.

However, against the backdrop of Bond’s still-uncertain future, Villeneuve’s CV of Hollywood blockbusters and smaller features produced in his native Canada is certainly impressive. Fresh off the epic Dune (2021) and its 2024 sequel (with a third film based on Dune Messiah forthcoming next year), and with a filmmaking career that spans absurdist psychological dramas (Maelström [2000]), mystery (Incendies [2010]), crime thrillers (Prisoners [2013], Sicario [2015]), and science-fiction (Arrival [2016]), he seems more than just a very safe pair of hands to usher Bond into its next big-screen era after the secret agent’s extended screen absence. A glance at Villeneuve’s genre-spanning back catalogue also hints that 007’s future under his command might lean more on the gritty brutalism and heightened emotion of Dalton and Craig’s tenures rather than harking back to the sardonic witticisms of Moore, or even the lighter, broader appeal of Brosnan.

When it comes to 007, and given the critical and commercial success of the Craig-era films, more of the same might not be a bad thing – though the series has always secured its future by trading in forms of repetition and difference as part of its remarkable longevity.

Villeneuve is certainly not afraid to inherit weighty and beloved material either, or juggle iconic intellectual properties, as his two Dune adaptations and much-anticipated sequel Blade Runner 2049 (2017) make clear. But the question remains as to whether the now-established Bond formula more than 60 years in the making is flexible enough to accommodate Villeneuve’s directorial vision.

Releasing a statement earlier this week, the Quebec-born director assured Bond fans that “I grew up watching James Bond films with my father, ever since Dr. No with Sean Connery. I’m a die-hard Bond fan. To me, he’s sacred territory. I intend to honor the tradition and open the path for many new missions to come.” These gestures by Villeneuve to the importance and maintenance of legacy are clearly strategic moves, designed to evidence a course correction following lukewarm responses from audiences towards Bond’s recent Eon exodus. Indeed, Amazon’s acquisition of the series from longstanding producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson a little over 4 months ago was almost immediately accompanied with very real concerns about the possible dilution of Bond’s legacy, the commercial lure of spin-offs designed to flesh out the backstory of popular characters, and even rumours of a potential move to television.

Since kick-starting the spy cinema craze of the 1960s, the Bond series has, as with any popular film franchise, always had to reckon with the threat of its own obsolescence. The shifting taste cultures of the 1970s was a particularly testing time for the UK’s finest cinematic export, as 007 – who was himself changing from Connery to Moore via Australian actor George Lazenby – was confronted by an industry and audience increasingly sceptical that Bond had run its course.

And so here we are once again. But at a time when the contemporary Hollywood marketplace is full to the brim with a never-ending cycle of action-oriented films and franchises, the incoming Villeneuve might just offer audiences that bit of welcome reassurance by future-proofing Bond’s status as a British institution against enduring (though admittedly unresolved) charges that 007 is ultimately past his best.