Next year, Daniel Craig will once again don a tux and rocket-powered dress shoes as he reprises his role as James Bond in Spectre. However, according to The Daily Beast, executives at Sony Pictures are already discussing future installments of the iconic franchise and who could be cast as the globe-trotting super spy.
Actor Idris Elba (The Wire, Luther) has long been a popular choice among fans to portray 007, and it appears Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chairman Amy Pascal is inclined to agree. In a January 2014 email exchange between Pascal and Elizabeth Cantillon, former executive vice president of production for Columbia Pictures, which distributes the Bond films, Pascal wrote, “Idris should be the next bond.”
Craig is signed up for another Bond film after Spectre, but previously expressed a willingness to move on to other projects. In an interview with Rolling Stone in 2012, Craig said, “I’ve been trying to get out of this from the very moment I got into it. But they won’t let me go, and I’ve agreed to do a couple more, but let’s see how this one does, because business is business and if the shit goes down, I’ve got a contract that somebody will happily wipe their ass with.”
As for Elba, he’s attached to a number of upcoming projects, including Avengers: Age of Ultron, The Jungle Book, and Bastille Day, in addition to Luther, but has nothing scheduled beyond 2016. In an interview with The Huffington Post last year, he expressed a strong interest in playing Bond. “I say it all the time, but if [James Bond] was to ever happen and if I was ever to get offered that role, that would be the will of a nation. That would be like, ‘Wow, human beings are really powerful. They really made that happen, because Barbara Broccoli certainly didn’t’ … it would be the will of a nation because everyone has been saying that to me.”
