Daniel Craig’s time as James Bond concluded with No Time to Die, the most recent film in the franchise and with the search on for the next Bond, there have been renewed calls for the next iteration of the character to be female. However, overseer of the Bond franchise Barbara Broccoli isn’t interested in a woman taking on the iconic super spy role. Instead, she thinks that women should have their own characters, rather than simply playing male roles, though she did say that she was open to other ideas for Bond, such as a Black Bond — so long as they were British.
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“I think it will be a man because I don’t think a woman should play James Bond,” Broccoli told The Hollywood Reporter. “I believe in making characters for women and not just having women play men’s roles. I don’t think there are enough great roles for women, and it’s very important to me that we make movies for women about women. He should be British, so British can be any [ethnicity or race].”
These comments aren’t the first time Broccoli has asserted that she believes Bond needs to be male.
Last year, she said something similar to Variety as well.
“He can be of any color, but he is male,” Broccoli said at the time. “I believe we should be creating new characters for women — strong female characters. I’m not particularly interested in taking a male character and having a woman play it. I think women are far more interesting than that.”
While Broccoli is firm that the next Bond shouldn’t be female, the search for who the next Bond will be also isn’t exactly full steam ahead, either. According to MGM chief Pamela Abdy who works with Broccoli and Michael Wilson on the franchise, they’re letting No Time to Die have its moment before moving onto finding a replacement for Craig.
“It’s wide open,” Abdy told The Hollywood Reporter. “We’ve had very early preliminary conversations with Barbara and Michael, but we wanted Daniel to have his last hurrah.”
You can see No Time to Die in theaters now or rent it via Theater at Home on digital platforms like Vudu and Amazon Prime Video.
What do you think? Do you agree with Broccoli that Bond should never be female or are you hoping that there is eventually a female Bond? Let us know your thoughts about all things James Bond in the comments.
