Idris Elba
UPDATE (4:50 p.m., New York time): The Hollywood Reporter quotes a representative for Fuqua as saying the supposed conversation with Barbara Broccoli never happened and the Daily Star story was “all made up stuff.”
Justin Kroll, a writer for Variety, had the following:
Real BOND Update: Barbara Broccoli and EON currently meeting with actresses and actors for Bond Female lead and Villain for BOND 25, what they are not doing is thinking about who would replace Craig when Craig hasn’t even started filming this film yet
— Justin Kroll (@krolljvar) August 10, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
ORIGINAL POST (tweaked to incorporate Fuqua’s denial): Three years ago, the blog said the Idris Elba/James Bond “debate doesn’t appear to be going away soon.” Talk about an understatement.
It’s 2018 and this week the idea of Elba playing 007 was trending all over social media. It began a story in the Daily Star. The tabloid’s article said director Antoine Fuqua “chatted to Barbara (Brocccoli) about who will take over from Daniel Craig, 50, if he hangs up his gun after the next Bond film, due next year.”
Antoine, 52, revealed Barbara feels “it is time” for an ethnic minority actor to star as 007 and she is certain “it will happen eventually”.
He added: “Idris could do it if he was in shape. You need a guy with physically strong presence. Idris has that.”
There was no indication the Daily Star reached out to Eon for comment (and now we know why).
Back in December, Broccoli said the following in a Hollywood Reporter podcast.
Question: Would you ever hire a person of color or a woman to play James Bond one day?
Broccoli: Anything is possible. Right now, it’s Daniel Craig and I’m very happy with Daniel Craig.
Meanwhile, the Fuqua quote got cited in summaries produced by CNN.com (which asked Eon for comment), People, and Esquire. Almost immediately there after (but before Fuqua’s denial), fans debates ensued. Temperatures up in a thread on The Spy Command’s Facebook page.
Like the movie groundhog day, many of the same comments uttered before were stated again.
–Bond is white/it’s political correctness run amok/it’d be like casting a white guy as John Shaft. Of course, people of color have seen the opposite (“whitewashing”) occur for many decades. White guys (Olivier Welles) playing Othello, white guys playing Asians (like Mickey Rooney’s less-than-subtle performance in 1961’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s) or Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman in the title role, who was half Chinese, half German.
–Read the books! Where Bond has a scar down his cheek and Felix Leiter (played by two different black actors in a combined three movies, including two made by Eon) was a Texan with straw-colored hair.
–Elba is too old to play James Bond. Elba turns 46 on Sept. 6. Of course, last month saw the debut of Mission: Impossible-Fallout starring 56-year-old, age-defying, skydiving Tom Cruise.
–Elba is too old to spend a decade playing 007. The traditional expectation is a new Bond actor will be at it for about a decade. However, the hiatus between 007 films is growing. Eon will barely make three 007 movies in the 2010s, assuming Bond 25 meets its scheduled fall 2019 release date.
Assuming Eon doesn’t sell itself, will it mount, say, only two Bond films in the 2020s? Is the “Bond actor spends a decade in the role” model up for reappraisal? Could future Bond actors do one-offs?
Not that any of this is going to change minds. But it looks like this latest wave — goofy tabloid stories and all — is as strong as previous ones.
Filed under: James Bond Films | Tagged: Antoine Fuqua, Barbara Broccoli, Bond 25, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Daily Star, Dr. No, Idris Elba, Joseph Wiseman, Mickey Rooney, Othello, The Hollywood Reporter, whitewashing |
The Spy Command 
If a black man becomes the next James Bond 007 in the year 2022 or becomes a woman, I will stop buying a movie ticket to see the future 007 movies. it’s bad enough they have turned Doctor Who into a woman. Did you know Freddie Prinze Jr was up for the role in the first Mission Impossible motion picture until Tom Cruise wormed his way into it?
James Bond should always be played by a white actor by someone of the United Kingdom. Ian Fleming’s intent was for his secret agent 007 to be white I’m sure.
I’m ready for Daniel Craig to shoot his last bullet and I’m ready for a new handsome male actor to take over the role…just not black.
Black/female reboots have a very long history of failure. The first successful black reboot to succeed happened earlier this year, when Denzel Washington’s “Equalizer” sequel topped $350 million. However, the original program has been off the air for 35 years, and most contemporary audiences don’t even know it existed.
The Wild, Wild West, The Honeymooners, Ironside, Kojak, The Fantastic Four (which featured a black Human Torch), the female version of “Ghostbusters” (which failed to make back its production budget with its target audience), and many more come to mind.
Elba himself said “No one wants it,” and Yaphet Kotto compared the idea to casting himself as JFK. And how do you explain a black Bond having a Scottish father and a Swiss mother?
In the end, it comes down to making a commercial decision. Stunt casting seldom produces results. The economics alone argue against changing Bond from what he has always been.
[…] model were adopted, new possibilities arise. Perhaps you could do a one-off with Idris Elba to satisfy the market who’d like to see him play Bond. He’d be around 50 when such a movie would be made, but […]