It's official: Amazon bought Bond. In a merger estimated to be worth around €8.450 billion, the tech giant acquired the rights to each film under the MGM umbrella. He hasn't said much in specific terms of what this means for Prime subscribers, but in theory it's a big deal. As a result, Amazon's flagship streaming service Amazon Prime Video is getting a huge boost thanks to the war chest of more than 4,000 movies and 17,000 hours of TV owned by one of the world's oldest movie studios. This chest includes Rocky, Robocop, and The Handmaid's Tale, but it's 007 that will inevitably prove to be the most lucrative addition to the streamer. Amazon "plans" to be able to "rip" 007 and other series for originals, according to a Variety report earlier this week. However, this is less likely to happen than you think. As discussed in a WSJ article this week, producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli maintain tight creative control over the franchise. In a statement, the couple said. "We are committed to continuing to make James Bond films for theatrical audiences around the world." The report also mentions that Amazon and the producers are aligned with Bond's current strategy, namely releasing premium movies in theaters, which has kept 007 evergreen for more than five decades (No Time To Die opens in September ). That said, we can dream of what Bond would look like on TV, and in this age of high-end spinoffs of popular franchises, we'd love to see 007 make it to the small screen one way or another. From this list, we've picked five possible TV series centered on the famous secret agent that we'd love to see on Amazon Prime Video, from origin stories to animated anthologies.
Young link
Perhaps the most obvious path for a James Bond spinoff is an exploration of the character's troubled past. Of course, origin stories aren't the most original way to go these days: Joker, Cruella... Wonka? - but the world's most famous spy, unlike other popular characters, actually has quite a bit of established lineage. In novels such as On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice, Ian Fleming spells out Bond's ancestry, describing his Scottish father and his Swiss mother killed in a mountaineering accident when he was just 11 years old. As an orphan, Fleming details Bond's formative years living with his aunt, studying at Eton and skiing with Hannes Oberhauser (spoilers: Blofeld's father) before joining the Secret Service at age 21. The point is, there's a lot of chewy meat for Amazon here, and a series focused on a teenage Bond or early in his career (pre-00 status) could breathe new life into the franchise. There's already a Young Bond book series, written by Charlie Higson in the early 2000s, so there's plenty of inspiration to go on. Hopefully a TV series won't look like The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles...
M in the field
Keeping with the theme of the prequel, it would be interesting to see M, the head of MI6 in all of Fleming's novels and all 24 films, have more backstory. In The Man with the Golden Gun, M's real name is revealed to be Miles Messervy, but Judi Dench's later incarnation of the character suggests there's room for interpretation when it comes to voiceover. Bond's ear. Shows like Pennyworth have shown there's an appetite for character-focused stories that would otherwise have been left out for their iconic counterparts - Batman and Bond are pretty moving acts to watch, so that wouldn't be beyond the odds. chance to see a series. focused on M kicking ass in various wars or snooping around like a cold war era assassin. Sadly, we don't expect to see a CGI-enhanced Judi Dench going back in time as The Irishman, but it would be great to see M spend the day in the sun.
An animated anthology
This one is a bit to the left, but imagine how cool it would be to see Flemish books adapted into a lively anthology. The success of shows like Black Mirror and Love, Death and Robots have demonstrated the public's willingness to embrace anthology storytelling, and what better way for Amazon to stamp its authority on the franchise than by signing off on a Clone Wars-style Bond series? ? Sure, it can be a bit ambitious to condense each story into a single episode, but we're willing to commit to multi-episode adventures that show us Bond like we've never seen him before. Archer is arguably the more fitting source of inspiration here, though we don't know how his sitcom-style adult humor would mesh with 007's explicit British character. Still, the likes of Invincible and Castlevania show there's a real appetite for serious, adult animation, and the best Bond spy stories would fit the bill.
A series by Felix Leiter
Like M, Felix Leiter has played alongside Bond from the very beginning. Like his CIA counterpart, he often provides an American shine to Bond's understated elegance, as well as occasional moments of bromance as the pair team up to take down Russian oligarchs, nefarious scientists, and twisted-eyed financiers. Depending on which novel you read (or movie you watch), Leiter's story is pretty wacky, too. Whether he's a prolific jazz journalist, a US Marine, or a shark attack victim—which Fleming literally implies cost him an arm and a leg—he's a man of many faces, and one who dives inside and out of the Bond verse as Robin in Batman. Although we hesitate to be hit with another origin story, Felix Leiter clearly has some stories to tell. Either way, a character of his complexity at least deserves to appear alongside Bond in future adventures, especially if Jeffrey Wright is set to reprise the role from Daniel Craig's films. At the same time, American comic book publisher Dynamite has released comics featuring Leiter, so there are plenty of sources on the table.
An evil Bond satire
Perhaps outshone only by the opponents of Batman and the Jedi, the James Bond franchise has some pretty good villains. Dr No, The Man with the Golden Gun, Jaws and Goldfinger are not just the titles of some of the best films of the '60s and '70s, but also the names of Bond's most memorable opponents. Now, we're not suggesting Amazon condone a Suicide Squad-like assembly of Bond's most notorious foes, but it would be a wasted opportunity not to somehow tap into 007's iconic batch of villains. Of all the characters in the franchise, they could be It's the villains that provide the way for some comedic content on the streamer: think Austin Powers' Dr. Evil (a famous Blofeld parody) or Robot Chicken: Star Wars takes on Emperor Palpatine. . The likes of Jaws, Oddjob, and Mister Big seem ripe for this sort of re-skin, offering plenty of room for slapstick banter and incompetent villainy. A comedy series could also benefit from an anthology format, as mentioned above, with short episodes satirizing iconic scenes from the movies; We can already imagine Auric Goldfinger angrily yelling “I hope you die” as his laser fires repeatedly.