After decades of thwarting muscular billionaires bent on world domination, James Bond has at last been captured by one. On February 20th the secretive global organisation known as Amazon announced that it had acquired creative control of the spy-film franchise from Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, the daughter and stepson of Cubby Broccoli, who first brought Bond to the silver screen in 1962. To buy control of the double-0 agent, Amazon is said to be paying a nine-0 figure.
The Bond film franchise is still bankable after 60 years. It has grossed around $21bn in today’s money. “No Time to Die” (2021), the latest movie in the series, came out at a time when going to a cinema often meant wearing a face mask; it went on to make $900m. But the series seems creatively stuck. Whereas a new Bond film used to come out every couple of years, six years passed between “No Time to Die” and its predecessor, “Spectre”. The wait for the next film may be even longer: after four years there is still no script, nor an actor to play the leading role.
The Broccolis are admired by fans for their protectiveness of the Bond brand. Daniel Craig, the latest actor to play the spy, has praised their resistance to the “many people and organisations [that] have tried to put their own footprint on Bond”, not naming Amazon. Yet for the tech giant, which paid $8.5bn in 2022 for MGM, the studio that holds the right to distribute Bond films, working with the Broccolis has sometimes felt like dealing with “Dr No”. Amazon’s only new Bond release since the pricey MGM transaction has been a forgettable gameshow called “007: Road to a Million”.
Amazon will now be free to exploit the franchise. The obvious model to follow is Disney’s cultivation of the “Star Wars” universe, which it acquired from George Lucas in 2012 as part of a deal worth $4bn. Disney has since reaped five films, more than a dozen tv spin-offs and incorporated the franchise into its theme parks. But Amazon is no Disney when it comes to adapting intellectual property (IP). Its take on “The Lord of the Rings” won viewers but did not live up to its record-breaking price tag. Fans worry that Bond’s new handlers will spoil the brand. “Citadel”, Amazon’s expensive but wooden spy series, directs viewers to related products on the company’s e-commerce site. The casting of Bond is usually a guarded secret; Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, has asked users of X who they think should take on the role.
What made the Broccolis surrender their spy to such a fate? Mr Wilson is 83 and plans to retire. Ms Broccoli is 64 and still making movies; she may simply have had enough of fighting with Amazon, whose streaming business model is radically different from the blockbuster theatrical approach that has sustained Bond for 27 movies.
A longer-term reason for selling is a force even stronger than Bond’s foes at SPECTRE: copyright law. America’s strict IP rules will keep 007 locked up until 2049, 95 years after the publication of Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel. But elsewhere Bond is slipping into the public domain. In Japan the books have been out of copyright since 2015, 50 years after Fleming’s death. The country has already seen a stage adaptation of “Casino Royale” (in which Bond was played by a woman). In Britain, where Bond-mania is strongest, they will become public property in 2035. New interpretations will surely follow.
Features that are unique to the films will remain under copyright, such as the gun-barrel opening sequence and the theme tune. But the novels contain the core material. “Casino Royale” features M, Q Branch and vodka martinis that are shaken, not stirred: everything, in other words, that makes a Bond film a Bond film.
Amazon has time to fortify its asset against imitators. It can build up a Bond cinematic universe, establishing actors in the key roles—or even adding new, copyrightable characters—so that future rival productions feel like they are outside the true canon. Whatever it does with the franchise, James Bond will eventually be a free agent, ready to slip through the fingers of another frustrated billionaire. ■
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