Dune director Denis Villeneuve is on board to direct the first James Bond film of the Amazon era, and though we don’t know yet who will take up the 007 mantle, we now know that Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight is reportedly on board to write the film, per Deadline.
Little is known about what the film will entail. It’ll be the first James Bond film not to be produced by lifelong Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson since Broccoli’s father Albert Broccoli first started producing the franchise all the way back in the ’60s.
If you can even believe it, now that the creator of Peaky Blinders is on board, all I can think about is the kind of tour de force performance the series’ star Cillian Murphy could deliver as James Bond – and what a remarkably different take on the character it could be from previous Bond actor Daniel Craig’s spiritually damaged, blunt force version of the super spy. I’m betting just about everyone who knows Peaky Blinders is suddenly thinking the same thing.
Knowing how Deni Villeneuve works, the new James Bond film is likely to be a deeply gorgeous and enigmatically engaging affair. Villeneuve has lately been working in a more sci-fi focused milieu with Blade Runner 2049 and his Dune series, which have proven definitively that the director is more than capable of picking up the baton of a beloved character or story and making it his own.
I’m not necessarily sure I’d want something like a sci-fi James Bond, but something a little more distinctively stylish than the Craig films with few more of the franchise’s requisite spy-gadgets might hit the mark quite nicely.
For more, check out our rankings of the best James Bond films, from Dr. No all the way through to No Time to Die. Then discover the latest movie release dates to pencil in to your calendar.
