The report outlined that the fallout is due to differences over the creative direction of the franchise, with Amazon reportedly in favour of “Marvel-style” ideas to expand the franchise, such as spinoff shows and films.
No, for fucks sake. No!
Broccoli is reported to have baulked at the pitch, telling friends that Amazon are “fucking idiots” who are taking the franchise “hostage”. She has reportedly expressed her disinterest in continuing to work with Amazon for any Bond films. NME has reached out to Amazon MGM Studios for comment.
“Fucking idiots” indeed. And too predictable, to be honest.
Her name sounds very cartoonish.
Amazon reportedly in favour of “Marvel-style” ideas to expand the franchise, such as spinoff shows and films.
Its not like there are a shortage of spy-thrillers bouncing around. I don’t see anything immediately wrong with an MI6 extended universe, particularly if it lets younger and more unorthodox talent have fun with the setting. FFS, “Agents of Shield” and the Netflix TV street-level-hero spin offs were functionally thrillers in their own right. A lot of them were very good.
But there’s so much wrong going on under the hood of the industry. More and more talent sacrificed on the alter of AI generated content (the Rings of Power generative dialogue/screenwriting was a horrifying example of how to waste $700M in acting/set design). More focus on special effects and less on cohesive storytelling or direction.
Like, if you got the writers room from Slow Horses to do a spin-off franchise called “009”, I would be fully on board. But if its just going to be the franchise eating its own tail with forty different poorly adapted variations on Casino Royale… yeah, I can understand why there would be drama.
As much as I think AI will make everything worse, I think it’s just a symptom of the real problem in the industry.
I think it boils down to two things:
- Major studios are pure capitalists with no artistic interest, with newcomers like Apple and Amazon not even having a culture for authenticity in any part of their operation
- Marvel made too much money
So what they’ve learned is that there’s no point in making movies - if they want to make money they need to make a franchise. So they keep investing in anything they can possibly milk into a soulless franchise that sucks in consumers and leaves them hooked.
There’s no room for artistic authenticity in this process. It will produce worthless garbage by design. It’s consumerism turned into cinematography.
Thank god some are rebelling against it.
If any expansion came from the creative team behind Bond I’d be ok with it, I guess, but when owner Amazon is trying to force it reeks of cash- grab monetisation.
I mean, the Bond franchise is only in the state its in because the original producers couldn’t crank out more than one movie every seven years. That’s embarrassing. And everything since Skyfall has been mid-to-crap, despite them throwing fortunes behind it and having a Chad like Daniel Craig at the helm.
That said, the parent company playing tug-of-war with the creative team over how to deliver the next edition in the franchise is a big reason why we get these annoying delays. But, at the same time, giving ten creative teams $50M to make their own entries in the franchise strikes me as a better move than giving one team $500M.
Amazon Storywriter was developed back in 2015 to generate long form works - novels, screenplays, etc - without the need for large writers’ rooms.
There’s a free version that’s been floating around she a few years, but it has been in active use by the Amazon Prime content team for longer than that
Good, I hope she doesn’t let then ruin it
arguably the Daniel Craig ones did that by being actually fairly believable spy movies that made slight sense.
Bond is about using a magic watch to blow up vaguely Russian people and sleep with barely legal teenagers
Timothy Dalton movies at least performed better consistently (albeit it two movies isn’t as consistent as one needs). Not to mention that Roger Moore is a fucking creep. The women on screen didn’t seem to want him so much as they feared him. Connery is clearly desired by women and Brosnan is just the ideal Bond in my head (I blame the N64). Roger Moore has such awful movies by comparison and his arrogance IRL just makes it that much worse.
I’ll just say, George Lazenby was disliked so much he was only in one film. Though, he got the role in a very James Bond way.
What’s wrong with Dalton? I liked Living Daylights. Licence to Kill was alright too. They went too far in the “gritty” direction on the latter in my personal opinion, but at least they were trying something new, especially since some of the later Moore films went a little too far in the “wacky” direction (cough cough Moonraker)
Amazon out to ruin Bond.
New media does not change anything about old media.
Those old movies still exist and stay equally as enjoyable to watch no matter what they do with the new films.
I used to feel this way, too, but I think I’ve recanted. Whenever I talk about Star Wars now, for example, nobody seems to have any affinity for the Original Trilogy (my favorites), but almost everyone is some shade of familiar with the numerous Disney+ shows (I’ve tried them all, but they’re just not for me). I also can’t help but feel like what those three films represented to me as a whole has been fundamentally transformed by the quantity-over-quality approach that Disney has taken.
In other words, the originals still exist and are just as enjoyable for me, but the “meta” and public discourse about the franchise has shifted in a way that is often alienating to me. Could also just be part of getting old, I suppose!
That name sounds made up.
More power to her though, fuck Amazon.
Albert R. Broccoli was the original co-producer of the Bond franchise (along with Harry Saltzman). Barbara Broccoli is his daughter, who helped him with production through the '80s and took over the franchise starting with GoldenEye in '95.
She’s responsible for the more modern era of Bond that started with Pierce Brosnan, and also the rebooted era with Daniel Craig. She specifically rebooted the franchise because of Austin Powers, which satirized the Bond films and basically turned their tropes into a joke. She had to reinvent Bond so people would stop comparing her films to Austin Powers.
There’s a great podcast called “Kill James Bond” that posits the theory that every time a spoof comes out it scared the studios so much that they had to reboot it.
I’m surprised the family name isn’t associated with the invention of brocolli. Although, they are of Italian descent, which is where the word of the vegetable came from.
