Nobody Did It Better: Amazon’s Takeover of the Bond Franchise Marks the End of an Era

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The closing credits of 2021’s No Time to Die promised that, as always, “James Bond will return.” But just when that “will return” will be has been an open question.

Thursday’s news that the Broccoli family is stepping down as the creative honchos behind the Bond series came as a shock. Until that announcement, the James Bond films were a unicorn in Hollywood. One producing family effectively oversaw the entirety of the 25-film, 60-year-old franchise.

According to Variety, Amazon eventually wore Barbara Broccoli, the daughter of legendary producer Albert R. Broccoli and the woman with nearly sole creative control of the Bond films with the retirement of co-producer Michael G. Wilson, to cede creative control of the franchise to the corporation. (Although the $1 billion-plus payday probably didn’t hurt.)

The positives of the move: The chances of getting a new Bond film in the next two to three years increase exponentially. The franchise had been locked in a stalemate since No Time to Die, as Broccoli and Amazon (which bought MGM, the studio that owned the Bond film rights) were in a standoff over the creative future of the tuxedo’d spy.

The Bond franchise is no stranger to behind the scenes issues derailing a regular release schedule: Look no further than the six year gap between License to Kill and Goldeneye caused by a takeover of studio United Artists and creative problems, or the trouble Skyfall had getting to cinemas after MGM went bankrupt around 2010.

But waiting indefinitely in a rapidly shifting media market could have been a death knell for Bond as a bankable character. Is some Bond better than none? Is more (or Moore) better?

The negatives emerge from those questions. Amazon reportedly was not been shy about referring to the franchise as “content,” evidently eyeing an interconnected universe modeled after the Marvel Cinematic Universe or after whatever Disney is attempting with Star Wars. The bare bones are there—it doesn’t take much imagination to envision spinoffs featuring a young Q or Moneypenny in the field.

But what made the Broccoli control of Bond so remarkable was two things: consistency, and restraint.

The Bond franchise worked for so long because it made a deal with its audience, and consistently delivered. The films followed a formula: A menacing villain, beautiful leading women, gadgets, cars, action scenes (or “bumps” as Cubby Broccoli called them), exotic locations, general male wish fulfillment. With some exceptions, the films were never quite runaway hits. But they consistently delivered solid returns on their investments, and weathered the rise and fall of countless other franchises.

The Broccolis showed an impressive amount of restraint. For the series’ creative missteps, they always had an intuitive sense of when to course correct. After all, the grounded, more worldly Daniel Craig films emerged after the bombastic and ridiculous Die Another Day—a film widely derided by fans of the series, but a film that was also the highest grossing Bond film at that point in the series! Lesser producers could have just doubled down on the formula. But the Broccolis could tell that the series needed a fresh direction.

The family never gave into the temptation to turn Bond into the basis for a shared universe. When other franchises were racing to copy Marvel, the Broccolis stuck to their tradition of keeping Bond a strictly one-at-a-time cinematic experience. There’s likely gold to be struck in spinoff films and television shows. But the Broccolis understood that Bond’s primary appeal is on the big screen, and doing more would dilute the brand.

That’s exactly the risk that Amazon’s takeover poses. Turning Bond into another piece of grist for the content mill would compromise one of our oldest and most remarkable film franchises. It would take a series that allowed itself to take significant creative risks while working from a familiar formula to become just another player in the streaming wars.

Even when a Bond film is bad, it’s always worth watching. There’s something to be enjoyed — take Christopher Lee’s performance in The Man With the Golden Gun, the Mexico City opening of Spectre, or the joy of seeing Connery return to the role in Diamonds Are Forever. And the Broccolis deserved trust for being able to reinvent the franchise for the 2020s after successfully reinventing the franchise numerous times before.

Perhaps No Time to Die—a film that features the death of James Bond—is a fitting end for the 25-film reign. Perhaps the franchise needed to bow to the realities of modern Hollywood economics. Perhaps this is the only way: The economic equivalent of Bond stopping the countdown clock with 007 seconds left to the complete end of the franchise.

There’s no doubt that expanding Bond beyond the films to streaming will dilute the brand and frustrate long-time fans. Amazon will likely also shy away from the franchise’s rougher edges to make Bond more appealing to a larger audience. But after years of inaction, I’ll take some positive momentum. Maybe, just maybe, when the lights go down and Monty Norman’s iconic theme booms through the theater, this will be worth it. One thing’s for sure: I’ll be there opening night, vodka martini in hand.