While Amazon MGM continues to hunt down the next live-action James Bond, Patrick Gibson has quite successfully taken over the role in “007 First Light.”
The video game from IO Interactive has only been out for three weeks now, but it’s already sold three million copies, according to CEO Hakan Abrak. And Gibson isn’t the only famous face earning praise from players — he’s joined by Priyanga Burford, Alastair Mackenzie, Noémie Nakai, Kiera Lester, Gemma Chan, Jessica Rhodes, Chris O’Reilly, Bart Edwards, Anthony Howell, Lenny Kravitz and Lennie James in the all-star cast.
“When you’re involved in something as high-profile and legendary as this, we know that everybody involved in it is going to be on their A-game,” Burford told TheWrap at IOI Access earlier this month. “Everybody in every department is going to be the best they can possibly be, so that’s another element where you are absolutely sure that you’re involved in something that’s going to be at the highest caliber.”
The event at The Hollywood Roosevelt took place during Summer Game Fest 2026, complete with panel discussions from Véronique Lallier, Hilde Sunde, Mattias Engström, Martin Emborg, Tim Willits, Jane Perry and Abrak, as well as virtual appearances from Gibson and Wiz Khalifa (in support of “Hitman”). Prior to the rooftop afterparty, Burford, Mackenzie, Nakai and James spoke to TheWrap about bringing their prequel to life outside of film and TV.
“For me, it felt like a cross between theater and audio drama,” Burford said. “You are 100% doing the scenes as you would do them, rather than doing a kind of sketchy version. The authenticity is there.”
“There were some scenes where we would have partial props, so we would have something that symbolized a chair or symbolized a desk or symbolized the opening and closing of a car door or the way you were sat when you were driving,” James added. “We would have something, it wasn’t a car, but it was something that made your body sit as if you were in a car.”
“That’s also why it feels like theater, because you have to mobilize your imagination a lot more,” Nakai elaborated. “It’s actually the same job, it’s acting. We just have to imagine that, Oh, this is an Aston Martin, instead of a couple of boxes and some scaffolding … every single scene is about character and it’s motivated by character, so in that sense, it’s the same thing.”
“It’s low-tech and high-tech in equal measure,” Mackenzie echoed.
Naturally, having 27 “Bond” films to pull from offered a unique mission for the actors portraying existing fan-favorite characters like M and Q.
“With Q, it’s interesting, because, of course, you don’t want to emulate anyone; you’re coming at it fresh. But having said that, you’ve also got to respect the legacy that exists, so it’s a kind of balancing act between the two things,” Mackenzie shared. “Q is an iconic character, and the relationship with him and Bond has been established over however many movies. You’re still going to get that senior figure-young agent dynamic, you’ve got to get that right to make the relationship work. And I think that Q probably was a field agent himself, he’s got experience.”
“With M, the exciting thing to explore was how she interacts with Bond at the very beginning of his journey,” Burford agreed. “Maybe he’s actually not in a good way at all as a young man and she’s got this project that she wants to start. She sees this very unformed, talented young man who’s got something, but he’s impulsive and he’s insubordinate and difficult. That was great for me, because it meant I got to figure out what that would be for this Bond, and I really enjoyed that.”
“The brilliant thing about the Bond journey is that he always brings it back to the mission, he always gets the job done. So for me, with Greenway, it was being the person who taught Bond about the importance of the mission, and in doing that, create a man who’s just focused on the mission,” James further explained. “Because in actuality, Greenway doesn’t give a s–t about Bond. What he gives a s–t about is the mission. When he’s annoyed at Bond, it’s because Bond’s getting in the way of the mission or he’s not helping the mission, so I tried to create a character who existed in that world in order to give him trajectory.”
And, no… none of the actors had any intel to share about who might be the next James Bond.
“007 First Light” is available for download on PlayStation 5, Xbox and desktop.
