James Bond video games might be coming back in a big way.
Deadline reports that Amazon MGM has brokered a new deal to take full creative control and majority ownership of the James Bond franchise. Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli where the children of Albert R. Broccoli, producer of the James Bond since 1960’s Dr. No. As Broccoli’s heirs, they were directly involved as producers of James Bond movies and other media until now.
While Amazon MGM did not announce the terms of the deal, Deadline speculates that Wilson and Broccoli simply chose to retire from working on the franchise, in favor of other personal projects. Deadline also reported on past reports that Wilson and Broccoli were not getting along with Amazon MGM, particularly in production of the next James Bond film.
Some fans were naturally skeptical of Amazon MGM, but Deadline explains why Wilson’s and Broccoli’s exit may be a good thing. Barbara Broccoli in particular was resistant to the idea of creating a James Bond extended universe, so if you were hoping to see movies and shows involving Moneypenny, Le Chiffre, Q, Vesper Lynd, etc., she was the reason it wasn’t happening. Subsequently, if Barbara Broccoli had her way, the 2010 GoldenEye reboot on the Wii could have been a considerably worse game. She wanted to remove guns from GoldenEye!
Some younger players may not remember this, but James Bond was a significantly bigger video game franchise in the 1980s through the 2000s compared to the last two decades. GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64 turned James Bond into an FPS genre that thrived until the PlayStation 2, but Broccoli’s and Wilson’s general indifference to video games showed in how fewer games were made since then.
We do know that the last game they greenlit is an unrevealed title by I|O Interactive, which still seems to be years away from release. If this game will be based on the next movie as speculated, that movie’s delay may have also staggered the video game’s production. But obviously, there can be more than one James Bond video game at a time.
While Amazon MGM isn’t guaranteed to make a good James Bond movie, they could do better in greenlighting and producing James Bond video games. There’s so many things that they can do, that don’t even have anything to do with those alleged plans of a James Bond extended universe. For example, there’s a lot of untapped potential in bringing James Bond to crossover games like Fortnite, Minecraft, or Call of Duty. Subsequently, we have yet to experience James Bond Telltale style narrative adventure games, and very few examples of James Bond racing games. We could also see James Bond going outside of the box and be added in as a new themed deck in Balatro, for example.
We won’t deny that there is cause for concern but there’s also reasons to hope that good things could come out of this new deal. We would certainly look forward to Bond joining Indy as a successful video game license revival.
