Post
by pete26 » Sun Nov 24, 2024 8:54 pm
Well seeing as the franchise is probably dead, they may as well milk it for what it's worth. I quite like them but prefer the Heritage 300 models more. I know at the end of NTTD they said James Bond will return, but I believe that this is misinformation to keep the franchise returns running for as long as they can. Eon Productions, AKA Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson sold the distribution rights for all the Bond films to Amazon soon after completing NTTD. I think this is a prelude to their retiring the series, at least as a movie franchise. Broccoli wants to focus on "other' Projects and Wilson is 82 so probably wants to retire with his millions.
If you notice there have been quite a few indications that the franchise is finished: 1) They killed Bond off 2) There has been no announcements of either a new film, or a new actor, to play Bond, even though rumours have been circulating since 2019 3) Daniel Craig was asked recently who he would like to see play Bond and he said he didn't care. 4) The Bond movies have been available to buy on Prime, other than Bond week when they were free for viewing with a subscription. Last week, I was seeing notifications that the Bond films were not going to be available to view with a subscription after the last Bond day, however, this has changed in the last few days and the movies are still available, although this could be because you can watch them with a Stan subscription.
Unfortunately the Bond producers have always been known to fly loose with the facts, They said Danny Boyle was replaced as Director of NTTD because he wanted to kill Bond off. In reality the opposite was true, he denied that and said that he told them it was stupid to kill a character like Bond as that would spell the end of the franchise. He said it was an unspoken rule that Bond doesn't die, even though Fleming himself wanted to kill the character off at the end of "From Russia with Love", but changed his mind when his publishers made a lot of noise.
I think that the disclaimer at the end of NTTD was fulfilled by the Prime tv show 007, the road to riches, several novelisations without 007 as a lead character but mentioned as well as licensed comics produced by Dynamite. So IMHO, we will not see another Bond film. Amazon may produce a limited series like Reacher based on Fleming's original novels, but to keep the tone they would need to set them in the Cold War, which is doubtful anyway given the current climate in Hollywood. Some even speculated that the only way to keep the series relevant would be to replace 007 with a female, which they did in NTTD, but after that plans must have fizzled away.
I think another reason that there have been no announcements is that Daniel Craig is still an Omega Ambassador and is an unofficial (or maybe official) board member of Omega.
Another bit of trivia I found out the other day was that when Omega issues a new Bond watch at least one from a series is offered to the other actors who played Bond. I'm not sure if it's all of them, but both Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan had LE Bond editions. Sir Roger's tenure ended long before Omega became the watch of choice for Bond. His Omega was a 2012 edition and was auctioned last year at Sotheby's.