The announcement that Amazon paid more than $1bn for creative control of the James Bond franchise has sent shock waves across the film world and fans fear it could mean the end of Bond as they know and love it.
David Lowbridge-Ellis, the founder of Licence to Queer, a community of queer Bond fans, expressed concerns that the move could mean an end to the unique characteristics that make Bond appeal to different audiences.
“I can’t help but picture a sort of Happy Meal mass-reproduced version of James Bond; everyone knows what they’re going to get and it just becomes quite stale quite quickly.
“If we think about the Marvel cinematic universe, you watch those films and then … I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember anything about them the following day and nothing sticks in my memory … I don’t want the flavour of Bond to become something that is too predictable.”
Other superfans are worried the Amazon takeover could signal the end of Bond on the big screen.
David Antonio Smith, who runs a Bond-themed barber, Barber on Trym, in Bristol, said: “I hope they don’t consider a lengthy TV series because I don’t think James Bond should be on TV as a series or as episodes.
“You need to have the experience of sitting in that audience with 100 to 200 people in the cinema. You can’t do a world premiere on a streaming platform and what makes Bond official is that world premiere.”
Mark Wooldridge, film and media director of the 007GB Fan Club, who still gets goose bumps thinking of the first time he saw GoldenEye in the cinema, said the handover of creative control to Amazon threatens what he sees as the most important legacy of the franchise – the real-life action scenes.
“The Bond movies pride themselves on doing action for real with very, very minimal computer graphics or CGI,” he said. “There’s plenty of action movies that have been produced by various streaming services where as you watch it you know it’s not real … often it can be like watching a video game.”
After months of speculation, it was announced on Thursday that Amazon MGM Studios would be taking over creative control from long-serving masterminds Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson.
One person who is positive about the takeover is Daniel Craig lookalike Steve Wright. He said he was not opposed to Amazon releasing new films straight to streaming. “I think this is a good thing because it just needs to keep reviving,” he said. “I think the big cinema experience has definitely changed and I think you just have to keep up with the times, with technology and the way people actually view films.
“I don’t think they’re going to bring Daniel Craig back, so personally less great … Although technically you never actually saw him die”.
Other fans remain hopeful that the move to Amazon could also give the franchise a new lease of life.
David Zaritsky, the creator of the YouTube channel Bond Experience, said: “Many fear that they’re going to take the films to online streaming et cetera. I don’t think that’s going to happen. What I think they could do is create satellite mini-franchises around the characters, a series about Moneypenny, a series about Q that feeds into the movies every two years, for example.
“I think it’s a resuscitation of the franchise and I’m looking forward to the next steps.”
