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Will we have a new 007 soon? Aaron Taylor-Johnson has reportedly met with 'James Bond' producers
No stranger to franchise filmmaking, Taylor-Johnson could be next in line to tackle MI6's gentleman spy.
James Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson may have found their next 007 — or at least a promising frontrunner.
According to a report from Puck's Matthew Belloni, the curators of the multi-billion dollar franchise recently enjoyed a successful meeting with Bullet Train and Kraven the Hunter star, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who is purportedly one of the prime candidates to inherit the role of MI6's gentleman spy from Daniel Craig (the latter officially closed out his globe-trotting tenure as Bond in 2021's No Time to Die).
"Taylor-Johnson fits the bill — great actor, British, fits the younger direction the Broccolis want to go, accomplished but not particularly famous — he’s about to be a much bigger star," writes Belloni. "If Sony’s Spider-Man spinoff Kraven the Hunter or Universal’s Ryan Gosling two-hander The Fall Guy works, Taylor-Johnson might end up, ironically, too famous to take on Bond."
Even so, the actor is no stranger to franchise filmmaking after starring roles in Avengers: Age of Ultron (Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe), Godzilla (Warner Bros. and Legendary's MonsterVerse), and two big screen adaptations of the Mark Millar-created Kick-Ass.
He'll return to the world of comic books this October as the pelt-wearing Spider-Man baddie known as Kraven the Hunter. The standalone feature — helmed by A Most Violent Year and Triple Frontier director J.C. Chandor — fits into Sony's recent push to establish its own Marvel movie juggernaut outside of the Disney-owned continuity. So far, however, the results have been incredibly mixed to say the least. Three words: "It's Morbin' time!"
Given that No Time to Die is barely a year old and Bond's literal corpse has only just begun to cool off, we don't expect an official 007 casting update for quite some time. Besides, the producers need to figure out their globe-threatening villain before they can turn their sights to the suave secret agent with a taste for shaken martinis.
"We always sit down with our writers, and we start by thinking about, 'What is the world afraid of?' We start by thinking about, 'Who’s the Bond villain?'" Broccoli explained back in September. "We try to focus on that as the sort of uber story, and then we want to also look at Bond’s emotional life, and what he’ll be facing personally that he hasn’t had to deal with before. So he has two big issues in the films — one is the geopolitical one and the other is the personal one."
Want to check out more of Taylor-Johnson's filmography? The Illusionist is now streaming on Peacock.
