Die Another Day was not a good film. Invisible cars, a face-morphing villain with a space laser, and a Madonna cameo that violated at least three articles of the Geneva Convention. It was James Bond reaching a crescendo of absurdity – and Pierce Brosnan deserved none of the blame for it.
“I never felt I had complete ownership over Bond. You'd have these stupid one-liners – which I loathed – and I always felt phony doing them."
But, for at least three-quarters of Brosnan’s tenure, he crushed it. The Irishman was the first Bond since Connery who seemed equally comfortable in a tuxedo and a fistfight. He could kill a man with a belt buckle and order a martini in the same sentence, and his nonchalance while doing it was mystifying to an entire generation.
After a trio of ‘90s films that pulled the character out of the Cold War with a charm that changed the role forever, Brosnan even mustered every ounce of enthusiasm to push through a surfing scene in Die Another Day that looked like it was rendered on a PlayStation 2.
And for all of that, the Broccoli family thanked him by letting his contract lapse via the press – even after they had opened discussions around a fifth film. No chance to redeem himself. No proper farewell. Just a curt phone call and a mountain of salacious headlines. They essentially ghosted James Bond.
Almost immediately following, Daniel Craig was allowed to mould his Bond from the beginning. A clean slate that ultimately ended with the actor returning for his fifth and final film on the proviso that he could kill the character off. A self-sabotaging two-and-a-half-hour cinematic funeral complete with a weeping baby mumma, Hans Zimmer soundtrack, and a missile strike of biblical scale.
Here’s the state of play in mid-2026: Amazon has completed its US$8.5 billion (~AU$11.8 billion) acquisition of MGM. The Bond franchise is now, whether the purists like it or not, a property of the same company that delivers laundry detergent to you overnight. EON Productions, the company owned by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli (and up until recently, divine gatekeepers of the cinematic franchise), finally ceded full control to Amazon last year after a drawn-out, clearly futile battle to retain some shred of creative direction.
With the red tape finally out of the way, things are once again gathering momentum, regardless of your perspective on the divorce. Denis Villeneuve – the man behind Sicario, Prisoners, Blade Runner 2049, and Dune – is confirmed as the new man at the directorial helm. Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight is penning the script.
There has been persistent speculation that Knight and Villeneuve might retreat Bond into the shadows of a noir period piece, which I’d love to see, and I can’t think of any other director better suited to execute it – gritty, vintage, overcoat-heavy, and Fleming-faithful.
We were one of many who quickly piled on the doom and gloom immediately following Amazon’s acquisition of the intellectual property rights to Bond. But what if we thought about it with a forced optimism – could such a fundamental reset allow for more creative risks with Bond?
Something genuinely interesting and equally commercially lucrative. A single film to bridge the gap between the old guard and the new. Amazon could play the ultimate Uno reverse card on the Broccolis and prove to a loyal audience that their reign doesn’t have to mean the franchise nose-dives into spin-off purgatory. At least not yet.
One film. Pierce Brosnan. Bond at 73. Who’s not tuning in to watch that? Nostalgia is not a dirty word when it's earned, and you could argue the ever-affable Brosnan earned this.
And Villeneuve would be precisely the director to materialise it. This is a filmmaker whose entire body of work is built around men reckoning with systems that have outgrown them. And if Villeneuve means Roger Deakins – and it should mean Roger Deakins, who gave Skyfall its enduring cinematic edge and who has already partnered with Villeneuve on cult classics such as Prisoners – then this could be the most ambitious Bond film ever made.
We need Brosnan to walk into a room and make everyone in the theatre uncomfortable, the way only a man who once killed for Queen and country, grappling with ghosts of the past, truly can. Brosnan’s tough, old-man revival era, aided by his time as the cunning and cold Conrad Harrigan in Paramount+’s Mobland, has proven his twilight performances are more captivating than ever.
Let him play into this new acting edge that audiences are loving. His 2.0 Bond could be spiteful, vindictive – scary even. His adversary could be a debt or a mistake that compounding interest has turned into something really sinister over time.
Give him one serious action sequence. Something that costs him physically and visibly. Then gift him the ending. Not death by missile, just a man who finally, on his own terms, puts the metaphorical license to kill back on M’s desk and walks away. I could see it as a moment that is equally satisfying for the character, the actor, and the audience.
Any canon objection, if you’re about to blurt one out, doesn’t hold up for a second.
This is a franchise in which six different men have played the same character across sixty-plus years with no coherent timeline. Judi Dench played M for two different Bonds who existed in two different universes. Skyfall established that Bond grew up in Scotland as an orphan, which directly contradicts half the Fleming novels. Connery even dipped out and popped back up again. The series has treated continuity like an airline safety card – it's somewhat useless and there if you want it, but nobody's ever bothered to look.
The longer between drinks, the longer the pressure stews, and the franchise slowly calcifies under the weight of its own indecision. The rumour mill spins overtime to the point that no one will be happy, no matter which direction prevails.
The silver bullet to all of this could be Pierce Brosnan. A cross-generational hero of the franchise who was let go without ceremony, from a character he helped propel into the 21st-century.
He has spoken about it publicly, graciously, for twenty years – never bitter, never resentful, always generous toward Craig and the mark the young gun left on the character. He even touted a mild interest in returning to the franchise in some capacity in an interview with GQ last year.
“How could I not be interested? But it's a delicate situation now. I think it's best to let sleeping dogs lie, really. I think so.”
One can’t help but read between the lines on those final words. A twinge of melancholy in his voice. Even Pierce Brosnan has never accepted that the 007 stage door is truly, completely closed. It’s haunted him for two decades.
Put the Walther back in his hand. Just once. Then let him put it down for good.
Would it really be such a poisonous pill? Amazon’s creative abbatoirs of retention metrics and spin-offs will inevitably butcher Bond’s leftover carcass. May as well have some fun with it.
For Queen and country, James?
