How A New Game Could Decide Who Is The Next James Bond

BusinessHollywood & EntertainmentHow A New Game Could Decide Who Is The Next James BondByCaroline Reid,Senior Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Caroline Reid covers the entertainment industryFollow AuthorMay 28, 2026, 06:00am EDTIO Interactive's new 007 game features a young James Bond, potentially indicating the casting direction for the next movie.IO InteractiveYesterday 007 First Light, the latest James Bond video game, was released by developer IO Interactive. In light of much of the media coverage, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a new movie.Not only has the game been covered by major mainstream print, online and broadcast news outlets all over the world, it has been widely billed as the latest instalment in the Bond franchise. There are a number of driving forces behind this excited exaggeration.The first is a drought of Bond-related content as it has been five years since the release of the previous film in the series, No Time to Die. The movie was Daniel Craig's last outing as the super spy and since then Bond's world has been turned upside down.The upheaval began in March 2022 when Amazon paid $8.5 billion for storied studio MGM giving it rights to the Bond movies. However, Amazon couldn’t freely develop future films as longtime stewards Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson remained in charge. So the tech titan had to shell out even more money and in February last year bought creative control from them for an estimated $1 billion, not the $20 million that was widely misreported as this article explained.Cutting no corners, Dune director Denis Villeneuve was hired to helm the next Bond movie which is due to be released in 2028. In preparation for this, Amazon MGM Studios recently hired Nina Gold, the casting veteran who populated the world of Westeros in Game of Thrones and also worked on Netflix series The Crown, as well as five films in the Star Wars franchise. Precisely two wee...