The Global Story: The battle to save James Bond from becoming slop

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Hey, it's Jacob Goldstein from Business History. In our new series, American Genius, we tell the stories of three great writers who changed the way business works in America. Our first episode is about Benjamin Franklin, who, among many other things, was a best-selling business writer. Take a listen. He's writing this much later in his life, consciously creating this image of himself. And I do want to emphasize how unusual this model is at the time, this self-made man myth, because you don't want to be self-made. It's low class to be self-made.

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1:23So this Father's Day at Lowe's, tap into free gifts for Dad. Get a free Select Craftsman Power Tool when you buy a Craftsman V20 Charger with 2-amp-hour and 4-amp-hour batteries. Plus, get a free DeWalt Power Tool when you buy a Select 20-volt Max XR 4-amp-hour battery kit. Dad knows our best lineup is here at Lowe's. Valid through 714, while supplies last. Selection varies by location. Hi there, I'm Asma Khalid. And I'm Tristan Redman. And we're the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. And we're here with a bonus episode for you. Now, if you are new to our show, let me just take a moment to explain a bit about what we do.

2:04Every weekday, we dive deep into one big story in depth that looks at where the world and America meet. This week, we've been exploring the growth of predictions markets and why they're being targeted towards young guys. These prediction markets are marketed to young men as quite a fun way to get involved in gambling, but the real money is going towards the hedge funds who, in the word of one commentator I spoke to, said that they're essentially eating their lunch. We've also been looking into why Hassan Piker and another left-wing American commentator were barred from entering the UK. Ultimately, it's a damning indictment on civil society and the flourishing of democracy or lack thereof.

2:45in the UK. And now that scientists are warning that a super Godzilla El Nino could be on its way, how have similar climate events shaped history? Humanitarian crises, environmental crises, price shocks, economic shocks are great for those in positions of power because they are very closely correlated towards high levels of centralisation. If you want to hear these stories in full and listen to our new episodes every day, just search for The Global Story wherever you a listen. For now, here's one of our favourite shows this week about the future of the James Bond franchise and whether it can interest Gen Z.

3:24Casting is finally underway to find a new James Bond, and the next actor to play him could make or break the future of the film series. But why has it taken five years to even start looking for a replacement Bond? Even if you're not into Bond films, stick with us. Because today's episode is really about something bigger. It's a David and Goliath story about what happens when an old school family business clashes with a tech giant. And at stake is a question about what movies are supposed to be. Is there still space left in them for cultivated mystery and rarity? Or should we accept that showbiz these days is about extracting every penny from a piece of intellectual property?

4:19From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redmond in London. And today on The Global Story, the battle to save James Bond from becoming slop.

4:37I love James Bond films. I love watching The Spy Who Loved Me on Christmas Day with my family when everyone slumped on the sofa. I love that character Jaws, the henchman who's got those metal teeth. I love all that old stuff. But if James Bond is going to survive, he needs a new generation of fans. And we're going to start today's episode by speaking to one of the members of our team who has a James Bond secret. So Zandra Ellen, you'll very often hear her name in the credits of this show. She's one of our producers and she's the Global Stories New York bureau chief. I actually have a confession to make.

5:12I've never seen a James Bond movie. I cannot believe you've never seen a James Bond movie. I'm so sorry. I hope you haven't lost respect for me. I would never lose respect for you, Zandra. But it's okay if you've lost a little bit. No, not even a little bit. But can I ask, what age bracket would you put yourself in, Sandra? I would say I'm either the youngest possible millennial or the oldest possible Gen Z. Okay, so you are in the group of people that potential makers of James Bond films might want to be attracting to their franchise to give it new life. How much do you know about James Bond?

5:54I know that he's a spy. I know shaken, not stirred. I know Bond, James Bond. I think that's basically it. Yeah, okay. What is it that doesn't attract you to these films? I think it's kind of two things. I think the main thing is just taste. I don't really like spies. I don't really like action movies. I've always sort of put James Bond in kind of like, that's boy stuff. And I don't really like boy stuff. I think there actually is something about the fact of it being a franchise in a series where it actually feels like there's quite a high barrier to entry. And it's a little harder to come in cold.

6:36So it just wouldn't be my first instinct to pick on a random night to watch a movie that's a part of a canon, I guess. Well, can I set you, Zandra, a reporting task? Give it to me, Tristan. How would you feel about sitting down tonight and watching a James Bond film and reporting back to us on what you make of it and what you think the chances are that Gen Z's can be convinced to like these films? And the film I'm going to suggest to you is Casino Royale. It was Daniel Craig's first foray into being James Bond. And the reason I'm selecting this one is that it was the last time they tried to reboot James Bond.

7:22So I'd love to know what you make of it. Will you accept this task? I will accept this task. Thank you so much. This is the best work task. I love it.

7:35So while Zandra's off discovering Bond, I'm going to sit down with our guest today. His name is Eric Schwartzel. He's an enterprise reporter at the Wall Street Journal in Los Angeles. And he wrote a pretty famous piece back in 2024 about the state of the Bond industrial complex, let's call it. But first, though, the key question for any Bond fan, which film is his favorite? I think like a lot of boys of my generation, I was born in 1986, Goldeneye and specifically the Goldeneye video game for N64 is just like a formative. I mean, it was like the most mind blowing video game experience I've had.

8:17Yeah, I'm with you there. I mean, GoldenEye and the GoldenEye video game is a deep classic. There haven't been that many Bond films recently. There hasn't been one since 2021. Normally, we would be due for one right about now, but we're not going to get one because there isn't even a James Bond cast. And for the first time, Amazon is in charge of the process of finding a new James Bond. How did that come to be? There are a couple reasons. One, you know, isn't specific to the Bond franchise, which would have been the COVID pandemic. But specific to Bond is the issue of there having been a years-long stalemate between Amazon, which controlled the rights to distribute Bond films, and the Broccoli family that controls all creative decisions about Bond.

9:16Until recently, the Broccoli family decided who played 007, who wrote the script, who directed the films. They really oversaw all decisions, major and minor, when it came to the character. Well, let's spend a moment talking about this family, the Broccoli's, because they are key characters in the story that we're going to tell today, particularly Barbara Broccoli. Who are they? So Barbara Broccoli is the daughter of a gentleman named Cubby Broccoli, who in the mid-20th century acquired the right to adapt the novels that Ian Fleming was writing about this secret agent named James Bond. And that put the rights to make Bond films into the Broccoli family, and it almost became something of an heirloom that was passed from generation to generation.

10:08And Barbara, his daughter, really grew up, and I'm not overstating it when I say that, really grew up a child of Bond. She was on set as a child. She was intern or apprentice as a teenager on set and really came of age as part of this Bond family dynasty. And when her father, Cubby, died, she and her stepbrother, Michael Wilson, really assumed much of that control. Now, Michael is a little older than Barbara, and he has kind of semi-retired in recent years. And Barbara became the keeper of the kingdom. I mean, I would talk to folks who were on set with her who said it's almost like a den mother effect whenever you're around her because of just how fiercely she guards James Bond and how seriously she takes this family inheritance.

11:00Well, I want to just share something with you, Eric, because there is an element of broccoli family inheritance over and above the Bond franchise, which I learned just this afternoon. and I almost fell off my chair. Apparently, I'm told, a piece of broccoli family lore, and I'll be very interested to hear from listeners who might be able to fill us in on the, whether this is strictly factually true, but the broccoli family legend is that they invented broccoli, the vegetable. and their namesake. I was astounded by this because how do you invent broccoli? And then I learned something else. So in a newspaper article, a broccoli family member said that they crossed two vegetables sometime in the last 200 years and in this operation created broccoli.

12:07I mean, it's just an extraordinary story. So James Bond is not even the greatest property of the broccoli family, potentially. They may, in fact, be responsible for the creation of the vegetable. Some would argue with the ranking you just made there. But I think the broccoli family would be my first guess, if asked, who invented the vegetable. Be that as it may, the broccoli family, so they get control of this very valuable piece of intellectual property, James Bond. At At what point, though, does Barbara get involved in the creation of these films? I mean, it's very early. I think it's when she's in her 20s.

12:50It was described to me, though, as what the family talked about at dinner. I mean, she had even before sort of assuming more official duties had absorbed her father's stewardship of this character. And the power that the Broccoli family held over Bond was really without comparison in contemporary Hollywood. And they had maintained it as the Bond property was passed from studio to studio. OK, well, you're talking about her control of the creative process in the past tense here. So let's talk about how it became past tense. When did the Broccoli family actually do this deal with Amazon and what were the terms of it?

13:38The Broccoli's became collaborators with Amazon when Amazon bought MGM, this classic storied Hollywood studio. Shut up, Warner Media slash Discovery. Discovery, there's a new acquisition in town. Amazon wanted to buy MGM because MGM just had this incredible library of movies. 4 ,000 film titles and 17 ,000 hours of TV programming, including Gone with the Wind, The Hobbit, and The Handmaid's Tale. That it could use to make all kinds of remakes and reboots and spinoffs. They want to make new shows based on the brands. Here are just a few of them. RoboCop, Poltergeist, Silence of the Lambs. And it also controlled the rights to distribute Bond films.

14:27And of course, the crown jewel of this acquisition, Mr. James Bond. The Bond series alone has the third highest grossing film franchise, box office returns of all time. That was considered a key asset that Amazon was bringing in. Imagine a James Bond spinoff show, exclusive to Amazon Prime, for instance. No one can say yet exactly what this partnership will yield, but with so much money on the table, there's a lot of room for growth. But Bond films couldn't be made without Barbara Broccoli's input on the story they would tell, who would direct it, and who would play Bond. Executives within Amazon thought, well, once we talk to them, we can really get them on our side.

15:13And maybe we can start doing Bond TV shows. Maybe we can start selling a bunch of Bond products on Amazon, doing all the things partners had tried to do in the past, only to be told, no, no, no, no. So the original deal is 2022. Yes. After the last film. Exactly, yeah. And nothing really changes for the Broccolis beyond they call MGM one day to talk about Bond, the next day they're calling Amazon. And this is not something that is necessarily new for them. They had sort of weathered these kind of corporate takeovers before. It's just that Amazon in particular brought, in the Broccoli's view, a mentality and an ethos that really conflicted with the way that they like to do business.

16:02Well, what is the differing ethos between how the Broccoli's had traditionally made films and how Amazon go about it? Well, I think this is actually why it really was such an amazing portrait of contemporary Hollywood. How do you know what's right for James Bond? Intuition, experience, instinct. Instinct, yeah. You had on one side a family that has viewed itself as shepherding this character over seven decades. With Cubby, I mean, something would happen. He'd go, that's not Bondian, that's just not Bond. And I think that's sometimes our reaction as well. They are saying, you know, we have taken risk on actors.

16:45We are often casting unknown actors as Bond. Like Daniel Craig, the most recent Bond was relatively unknown actor when he was first cast as Bond in the early 2000s. Exactly. And so there's this kind of old school mentality of producing entertainment. Caveat here, obviously Amazon would call this an unfair characterization, But the Broccoli thought that Amazon in particular was driven a lot more by algorithms relying on what had worked before. As one person told us, it was very hard to imagine an Amazon taking a risk on an unknown actor in a property as expensive as Bond. And this really was encapsulated in a story we heard where Barbara Broccoli was in a meeting with one of the head Amazon entertainment executives, and that Amazon executive referred to James Bond as content.

17:42and to Barbara calling something like James Bond content really embodied everything that was wrong about this kind of faceless tech company trying to come in and tell stories that resonate around the world. All right. So there's some interpersonal friction at this point in our story between Barbara Broccoli and these Amazon executives. Where does it go from there? Yeah. Everyone was noticing that it had been a few years since the sale and there was no traction on a new bond. There was no movie being dated. There was no one being hired. I started to hear that things were not going well and that relations were really frayed.

18:28And a lot of it boiled down to like a real lack of trust with how Amazon could handle this character and handle the movie. When we were speaking to folks who had talked to Barbara about the executives at Amazon that she was dealing with, numerous people told us that she had described Amazon executives this way. She would say, these people are expletive idiots. And she has this refrain that she attributes to her father where she says, never let temporary people make permanent decisions. So they were just at a total stalemate. What happened next? So there are three things that you need for a new Bond movie.

19:14You need a director, a script, and an actor. When my piece came out at the end of 2024, Barbara was telling people that there was no script, no director, and no actor. Relations had kind of fallen apart and no phone calls were being exchanged. And the following year, in 2025, there was an announcement that Amazon and the Broccoli's had reached a deal, only it wasn't for a new Bond movie. It was for Amazon to buy out control and take on the creative duties that Cubby and then his daughter Barbara had had for several decades.

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21:40at this point in our story eric barbara broccoli has ceded control of bond to amazon who now have carte blanche to do whatever they want with this legendary character of cinema do we have any leads on what they might be planning to do to bring james bond into the modern age there is a director denise villanue is going to direct this next movie and he's best known now for adapting the dune trilogy he's extremely well respected he has handled huge franchises beloved properties to great effect before. Now, we don't have a bond. There have been reports that Amazon is thinking about going younger than they have in the past, where they might cast someone in his 20s.

22:37I was always cautioned when I was doing my reporting on this topic to remember two things, one of which is, you know, it has traditionally been an unknown or an unexpected choice. And then the other thing that I was often told is that often when you see a name circulating in the press as someone who's being considered for Bond, that that actor's agent or team are putting that name in circulation as a buzz building tool rather than necessarily anything you should take seriously or credibly. But I think the choice of the actor, which Barbara Broccoli once equated to choosing one spouse, really does set the tone for the whole enterprise.

23:22So that's how you might develop the movies themselves with a big blockbuster director and a younger actor playing the role. But what about the kind of spinoff side of things? Do we know anything about what Amazon might be planning to commercialize the James Bond franchise? We don't really. And I think it's a good point because, I mean, Star Wars serves in some ways as a bit of a cautionary tale. I think what we've seen since the Disney acquisition, there has been a flood of programming, but so much of it is for the TV screen. And that is where a lot of the frustration comes with Star Wars and other franchises, which is like, this is too much, and it's sort of removing what makes it special.

24:12Amazon knows that the last thing they want is to be accused of ruining James Bond. And I think that is one reason why there's been such caution, because we have decades of evidence of what it was like under the Broccoli family and soon enough we will have evidence of what it is without that. And so there will be a before and after there. The after will be received as a referendum on Amazon, this online e-commerce giant, its ability to handle a character like this with care.

24:56Well, thank you so much, Eric. It's been great to talk with you. My pleasure. Thank you.

25:06I'm pleased to say, after that illuminating interview, we can cross to the main event, Zandra Ellen's first ever Bond film. So let's go to Zandra. What did you think? Hi, Tristan. Okay, so I had some notes. You're killing me here. Can you just give me the top line? Was it good or was it very bad? Okay, the top line is, I didn't like it so much. Oh. There was a chunk of about 45 minutes in the middle of the movie that I thought was dynamite. Ooh. From the moment that he meets Gurley on the train through the last hand at the poker table, I thought was perfect. Oh, and every time Judi Dench was on screen, I was so happy.

25:50But otherwise, it didn't quite land for me. And I'm happy to tell you why. Go for it. Okay. So first, and I fear this could be existential in terms of my ability to connect to the franchise. I do not find James Bond to be a particularly fun person to spend time with. I find him really, really boring. And so I wasn't rooting for him. I wasn't rooting against him. I just sort of didn't care what happened to him either way. Boring is the undesirable flip side of strong and silent. Yes, exactly. So that was the first big thing. The second thing was I had a lot of trouble with the love story. It felt like a bit of an afterthought, which is fine.

26:41Like I feel like in a lot of action movies, the romance plot is the afterthought. But I was really surprised to learn that, spoiler alert, it is kind of the emotional centerpiece of the movie. And that did not quite land for me. The third big picture critique I had, it's really interesting to consider to me when this film was released. It was 2006, were a few years post 9-11. And I wonder if maybe at the time it resonated for audiences for the big bad to be kind of like the abstract concept of terrorism. That kind of didn't totally resonate for me. Although, listen, Mads Mikkelsen, you could put him in front of me doing anything.

27:31I love to watch that man work. But I did feel like he wasn't really the central villain. The central villain was kind of like terror. Zandra, I appreciate that you, what you're saying is that you enjoy seeing Mads Mikkelsen torturing someone because that's what happens in the film. I did really enjoy that. We won't judge you. Thank you. So those were kind of my big picture notes. Okay, well, you are our representative of Gen Z and you speak for an entire generation. I speak for all of them. All of them. Do you think, Zandra, that James Bond has a future and can appeal to a younger audience or is Bond's goose cooked?

28:16I definitely think that there is a future to this franchise. I think there are some very easy things that we can do to remedy the situation. I want to see James Bond with a personality. I want to see James Bond weird. I want to see him funny. I want to see him have a flaw that is beyond being too good at his job and too good with the ladies. And I know that right now there's a big race to figure out who's going to play James Bond. Well, who are the runners and riders? The current list that BBC has, at least, these are kind of the bookmakers' favorites to get the part, are Callum Turner. I don't really know much about him other than he dates Dua Lipa.