Bond, Gen Z, and the Fading Movie Star
Or why casting Jacob Elordi isn't gonna make Bond any better
Welcome to The Trade, an examination and exploration of topics in the entertainment industry.
This post is free to enjoy but it's worth it to become part of my exclusive Gold Star Crew of Silver and Gold Film Mavens.
🌟Supporters like: William Arceneaux, Rafael Jasso, Lily, Julie Wyman, Zach Eastman, Jason, Evalyn Gelhaus, Kasey, Ernesto A. Garza and Carrie Peel💫
For the month of May, to celebrate my cats Elliott Stable and Harlow's birthday month I'm celebrating with 30% off a yearly subscription! Click this link, get the deal, and wish them a happy birthday.
Paid subscribers are the backbone of The Film Maven who support independent journalism, as well as female- and disabled-created content. Paid Film Mavens get access to shout-outs, exclusive articles and series, Zoom mixers, and The Film Maven Discord server.
Consider becoming a paid subscriber and joining the community that invests in independent journalism free of AI and influencer opinions!
This piece initially ran last July, but in the wake of Amazon moving forward on casting I'm reposting sans paywall
The last week has been quite the to do for the James Bond franchise. Though speculation about what’s going on with the franchise never completely goes away, it feels like it’s been in a constant state of where there’s smoke there’s absolutely zero fire for awhile now. But with the announcement back in February that Barbara Broccoli, long-time holder of the James Bond rights, finally decided to sell them to Amazon…..not a whole lot has happened short of jokes about all the ways Amazon could seek to profit off the character. (How they haven’t fast-tracked martini sets, watches, and suits is beyond me.)
But the last seven days has inundated us with at least something more tangible when it comes to Ian Fleming’s series, specifically the announcement that Dune director Denis Villeneuve was going to helm whatever this iteration would be, and a Variety article about the potential shortlist for who could play the character. As Variety laid out, “Insiders say that the studio and producers are interested in casting a British actor under the age of 30” with the top contenders being Jacob Elordi (he’s Australian but does the average consumer know that?), Spider-Man’s Tom Holland and Babygirl star Harris Dickinson.
As of 2026 those contenders now include Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Callum Turner, and Damson Idris. Elordi is said to still be in the running.
Though social media decried the announcement as ridiculous, and critiqued everything from Holland’s stature to the entire trio’s babyfaces, the idea fascinated me more for what it says about celebrity today. Or, more specifically, the lack of it. Hollywood has bemoaned the fading movie star for the last several years. Since the rise of streaming and the simultaneous fragmentation of the film industry meeting the amorphous expansion of social media, movie stars just…aren’t a thing anymore.
And by this we’re defining movie stars as a person who can command not only a significant salary but whose name can singlehandedly get a movie made and bring in boffo box office. Ask the average person to name a movie star and more often then not they’ll name an established star who started out several decades ago (Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise). That’s not to say there aren't contemporary movie stars, like Margot Robbie, but they’re more of a unicorn than they were in the past.
But in the case of Bond, being a movie star isn’t a necessity. Or at least it was in the past. An actor doesn’t play the role, the role plays them. It’s why past Bonds have struggled to break out of the ingrained persona of the character and/or become burnt out by the sheer exhaustion of making the movies and carrying the mantle. To play Bond is to become synonymous with the character, with the legacy.
Like the MCU, you’re also giving away a significant portion of your life to it, hence Amazon’s desire to groom court someone young who can play the role throughout their thirties and forties. Which brings us back to the movie star thing. Amazon presumes they’re playing the long game by grabbing a star right on the cusp of what they hope is superstardom. (At least with regards to Dickinson and maybe Elordi. Holland is already a star so he’s still an oddball choice.) But if movie stars are dying does it matter at all who they choose?
The other factor to consider here is Gen Z. No matter who plays Bond, Amazon still has an uphill battle selling it to the demographic they want, and that ain’t millennials who remember the franchise fondly. Instead, the hope is that the next generation of Bond lovers will be established….in a generation that notoriously doesn’t watch movies. Not to mention Bond’s history of misogyny and racism, colonialism, and all the other things that Bond’s been accused of in the past just makes the franchise look stodgy to a younger generation. (And that’s without Bond telling on the evil of corporate bros for the last several films.)
So what can be done? Is it enough for Amazon to green light a couple projects and find a cool young actor to be directed by a directorial icon like Villeneuve? There’s still a sheen of cool associated with the character, and that bloom isn’t necessarily off the rose. But if Amazon cannibalizes and attempts to profit off every little Bond related thing saturation is going to rack up quick. It’s also a question of how quickly they can set it all up.
Per Variety, Villeneuve is 100% focused on getting Dune: Messiah in theaters by next Decembers, so we won’t even see big movement on this until the end of 2026. We’ll be lucky if we see another Bond movie in 2027, six years between movie. And while six years and 5 months is officially the record to break, that was in a totally different cinematic landscape. People’s attention spans are even shorter and six years requires Amazon to invigorate an already apathetic audience to have interest in a decaying franchise.
There’s no easy answers here (or, if you have them, please leave them in the comments). I do wonder at what point we say bye-bye to the character for awhile. Right now, does anyone really miss Bond? Based on the response to these casting suggestions, I’d say it might be time to die.
You just read this for free! Here's what you missed by not becoming a Gold Star paid subscriber starting at just $4 a month or $30 a year:
- Access to all my paid content and exclusive series like:
Kristen Lopez
Kristen Lopez
- Shout outs on my newsletter when you join and whenever you have something you're launching.
- Included on my Gold Star Crew list
- Bi-Monthly Zoom Mixers where we can talk entertainment, get advice on journalism, and generally discuss the world.
- Access to our Discord server where we can chat about movies and entertainment. It's also where I host my yearly Golden Globes and Oscar watches.
- Participation in my new Film Maven Secret Santa Gift Exchange (launching November 2026), book clubs, and film discussion groups (launching later this year)
I have a new book dropping on July 28th! It's But Have You Read the Book: Romance Edition! I look at 40 of the most iconic romance novels and their filmic counterparts to show you the changes in between. Preorder your copy now!
