Daniel Craig’s dramatic exit from the James Bond
franchise in No Time to Die left the world in need of a new 007. After many debates about what color, gender, nationality, and age Craig’s successor should be, long-time producer Barbara Broccoli has made it clear that she is open to pretty much anything for the super-spy, but Bond will always be male and will always be British. However, it seems that there could be a greater challenge ahead for the Eon Productions team than thanks to Amazon’s acquisition of MGM, which handed them a stake in the Bond franchise.

After much wrangling, Amazon closed a deal to purchase MGM for a reported $8.5 billion in March 2022. Along with several big properties, including Rocky, Silence of the Lambs, the Pink Panther, and, of course, the biggest prize of all, the James Bond franchise. While Bond movies have since been added to the extensive library of Prime Video, the future of the franchise at the studio has been contentious since a year before the deal took place.

The latest reports, as per the Wall Street Journal, Amazon and Broccoli continue to be on very different pages when it comes to how the Bond franchise will continue, with Broccoli said to be uninterested in working with Amazon on the next run of Bond movies, while the studio clearly wants to get their fingers in the pie and wiggle them around a little.

According to several reports, Broccoli has slammed Amazon to friends, and made it abundantly clear that she does not want to work with them and feels that they do not fit the Bond franchise at all. This has seen the gatekeeper of Bond take a stand in the past and demand that the franchise only receives theatrical releases in the future, and that she, and Eon Productions, remain the sole creative controllers of what is one of the biggest movie franchises in the world.

Other reports have suggested that the biggest spat between the two came when Broccoli met with Amazon executive Jennifer Salke, who made the mistake of referring to the franchise as “content.” While this is completely understandable from a corporate giant like Amazon, for Broccoli the Bond franchise is so much more than that.

Before the MGM deal was completed, Amazon reportedly started pushing for new ideas to expand the Bond franchise, which would likely include several spinoff shows and potentially other movies. At the time, the talks were likened to turning Bond into a “Marvel-style” franchise. Again, not something that interests Broccoli after Bond has been a very closed, almost family-run business, for so long.

Since Daniel Craig’s final Bond outing in 2023, speculation has been going around and around as to who will play the role next, what the story will be, how the franchise will move on after the death of James Bond in No Time to Die. The list of questions goes on, but there have been very few answers so far. One thing that is for certain, is that James Bond’s toughest opponent ever may not be one of the many villains he has faced on screen, but could be the power struggle playing out behind the scenes.