The answer we’ve all been waiting for now feels tantalizingly close. The question on everyone’s lips since Daniel Craig left the role in 2021 is, “Who will play the next James Bond?” For five years, an assortment of names — from Idris Elba to Tom Holland — have been rumored to take the role, though clues slowly filtered through, directing fans toward the right answer.
Amazon, who has officially acquired the franchise for an eye-watering $1 billion, is searching for an actor who “oozes sex appeal” and is young enough to carry the role for many more movies, according to casting director Nina Gold, withproducer Amy Pascal recently announcing that the team’s “methodical” approach should come to an end before the year. After five years of speculation, and following The Gentlemen star Theo James pulling out of the race, it seems we are now down to six, with the apparent frontrunners including Jack Barton, Jack Lowden, Callum Turner, Jacob Elordi, Paul Mescal, and Harris Dickinson.
Recently, Slow Horses star Gary Oldman sent the rumor mill into overdrive, as he backed his Slow Horses co-star Lowden to play 007, even seemingly confirming he had already been picked for the role. “It’s been rumored that he’s on the shortlist,” Oldman says in a new interview. “We’re going to find out pretty soon, aren’t we? Because they have picked him. They have made their choice, but they have not announced it yet. So my fingers are crossed for Jack.” With these words sending the internet into meltdown, the question has now been posed to the man tasked with writing the new era of Bond.
Collider Exclusive · James Bond Personality Quiz Which James Bond Actor Are You Most Like? Connery · Moore · Dalton · Brosnan · Lazenby · Craig
Six actors. Six completely different visions of the same man — dangerous, charming, complicated, and almost certainly wearing a very good suit. Only one of them shares your particular way of moving through the world. Eight questions will figure out which Bond you really are.
🏴Connery
😄Moore
🎭Dalton
✨Brosnan
🤵Lazenby
💠Craig
01
How do you carry yourself when you walk into a room? Bond is always the most interesting person in the room. The question is how he makes you feel it.
02
How do you handle a dangerous situation? Every Bond faces it differently. What does your version look like?
03
How do you charm someone you need on your side? Bond always gets what he needs. The method varies considerably.
04
How do you handle your emotions on the job? Every Bond deals with this differently. Most of them not particularly well.
05
How would your colleagues describe your working style? MI6 has opinions about all of its 00s. What are theirs about you?
06
How do you feel about operating within the rules? The licence to kill comes with terms and conditions. Not everyone reads them.
07
What is your relationship with love? Every Bond has a different answer. None of them have found it easy.
08
When the mission is over, how do you want to be remembered? The name is Bond. The rest is entirely up to the man behind it.
The Name Has Been Determined Your Bond Is…
Six actors. One role. Your answers point to the Bond who shares your presence, your method, and your particular way of carrying the weight of being the most dangerous person in the room.
Dr. No — You Only Live Twice · 1962–1967
Sean Connery
You are the original — and you carry that fact without needing to announce it. There is an authority in the way you occupy a room that others spend careers trying to replicate.
You don’t explain yourself, justify yourself, or soften yourself for anyone’s comfort. The confidence is structural, not performed.
Connery’s Bond established everything — the tone, the danger, the cool — because Connery himself had the innate presence to make something that had never existed feel inevitable.
You share that quality: the sense that you were always going to end up exactly here, doing exactly this.
The name is Bond. In your case, it always was.
Live and Let Die — A View to a Kill · 1973–1985
Roger Moore
You understand something that more serious people miss: that wit is its own form of intelligence, and that making people laugh is not a retreat from danger but a way of mastering it.
Moore’s Bond is underrated precisely because the effortlessness looks easy — and effortlessness is the hardest thing to manufacture.
You have the same quality: a lightness that disarms people before they realise how sharp you actually are.
The raised eyebrow, the perfectly timed quip, the refusal to be rattled — these are not affectations. They are a philosophy about how to move through a world that would like to take itself too seriously.
You have never let it.
The Living Daylights · Licence to Kill · 1987–1989
Timothy Dalton
You took the role seriously when everyone wanted you to coast — and that refusal to take the easy version of anything is the most defining thing about you.
Dalton’s Bond has genuine moral weight: he feels the cost of what he does, he has lines he won’t cross, and he is not interested in the version of himself that pretends otherwise.
You share that intensity. You push harder than the situation technically requires, because you have a standard and you hold yourself to it.
He was ahead of his time — the Bond the franchise wasn’t quite ready for yet, arriving exactly when he was meant to.
You know what that feels like.
GoldenEye — Die Another Day · 1995–2002
Pierce Brosnan
You are the complete package — and you know it, which is part of what makes you so effective and occasionally so infuriating to the people around you.
Brosnan arrived at the role looking exactly like Bond was supposed to look, and he delivered on that expectation with a professionalism that made it seem effortless.
You have the same quality: a smooth competence, a charm that operates like a precision instrument, and the ability to make even difficult things look like they weren’t.
His era was the most commercially successful in the franchise’s history. There is a reason for that.
The reason is that some people simply fit their moment perfectly. You are one of those people.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service · 1969
George Lazenby
You stepped into something enormous with less preparation than anyone around you thought was sufficient — and you delivered something genuine anyway, which is the more impressive achievement.
Lazenby’s single outing is, by many measures, one of the finest Bond films ever made — and he is not a small part of why.
You share his quality of raw authenticity: less polished than the alternatives, more honest for it, capable of something real that technique alone can’t produce.
He was underestimated, and then he wasn’t, and then history caught up with him.
You are the kind of person history catches up with. Give it time.
Casino Royale — No Time to Die · 2006–2021
Daniel Craig
You stripped everything back and found what was underneath — and what was underneath was harder, more honest, and more human than anyone expected.
Craig’s Bond is the franchise’s most psychologically complete: a man doing a brutal job, carrying its costs imperfectly, capable of love and loss in ways that can’t be dismissed.
You share that depth. You don’t hide behind the role or the charm or the suit — you let the work show what it actually costs.
He was controversial from the moment he was announced and definitive by the time he was finished. The sceptics became the believers.
That arc — of being underestimated and then undeniable — is one you know intimately.
Steven Knight Has Responded to Gary Oldman’s 007 Casting Claims
steven knight on the red carpetImage via PA Images/INSTARimages
Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight will pen the script for the next Bond movie and the first of the Amazon era, with the great Denis Villeneuve stepping behind the camera. In a new interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today show, Knight was quizzed on Oldman’s comments about the casting, to which he cheekily responded, “I cannot speak about this subject. Much as I would dearly love to,” adding that he felt like he was “doing my duty for King and country” by taking on the franchise.
But presenter Anna Foster wasn’t ready to let the question go, following up by saying, “Presumably you know who it is when you’re writing it. Does that make a difference?” “It does make life a little bit easier if you know who that person is, but also you have to write the character, not the actor,” Knight replied, which prompted Foster to question whether Knight knew who the role was given to all along. “I refer you to my previous answer,” he responded.
Stay tuned to Collider for more updates as the search for the next James Bond nears its end.
