It has only been a few weeks since Amazon announced it had acquired full creative control of the James Bond franchise, but the rumor mill has been running nonstop ever since. The internet has been alight with speculation about which actor will take over for Daniel Craig as 007. While Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is fielding suggestions for the next Bond, though, the franchise’s future star is not the only role that needs to be filled for it to officially move forward.
Amazon also has to choose a director to helm its next Bond movie. The franchise’s previous directors include Sam Mendes, Cary Joji Fukunaga, Martin Campbell, Terence Young and Lewis Gilbert. Here are five filmmakers who could potentially join that list, and sooner rather than later.
Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan has been rumored for the James Bond franchise about as frequently over the past 10 years as the oft-cited 007 contender (and Nolan favorite) Tom Hardy. The director’s affection for the franchise is well-known, and he has never outright shot down the possibility of helming a Bond adventure of his own. He has, however, hinted that he would prefer the freedom of kickstarting a new Bond era rather than jumping into one actor’s ongoing tenure. That took him off the board in the latter years of Daniel Craig’s 007, but no longer.
There are not many directors more well-suited for Bond than Nolan. He is an expert at crafting thrilling blockbusters, and several of his past films — namely, 2010’s “Inception” and 2020’s “Tenet” — have featured prominent espionage elements. Coming off his success with “Oppenheimer,” it feels like Nolan can do whatever he wants now, too. (That is evidenced by his choice of a massive Greek epic like “The Odyssey” as his next project.) Whether or not Bond is something he is even interested in at this stage of his career is something only he knows. But this would not be a proper list without Nolan. It feels like it is his if he wants it, and Bond fans would almost certainly be delighted if it turns out he does.
Christopher McQuarrie
“Mission: Impossible” has emerged as a genuine competitor to the Bond series for the title of Hollywood’s most beloved spy franchise. Tom Cruise deserves a lot of the credit for that for putting his own body on the line again and again for the “M:I” franchise’s practical stunts, but credit must also be given to writer-director Christopher McQuarrie. After conducting uncredited, purportedly important rewrites on 2011’s “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol,” McQuarrie has written and directed 2015’s “Rogue Nation,” 2018’s “Fallout,” 2023’s “Dead Reckoning” and the forthcoming “The Final Reckoning.”
McQuarrie has, in other words, had just as much of a hand in elevating the “Mission: Impossible” franchise to its best heights as Cruise. In his writing and directing, he has demonstrated an ability to combine moving heart and pulse-pounding action more elegantly than practically any other franchise filmmaker working today. That skill makes him an appealing candidate for any studio that is looking to breathe some new life into one of its franchises. Here is someone who has repeatedly risen to meet the difficult demands of a massive franchise production and lifted said series’ standards along the way. One can only imagine how he would tackle the challenge of reinventing a franchise as storied as Bond.
Steve McQueen
10 years ago, Steve McQueen might have seemed like an odd choice for Bond, but not anymore. The “12 Years a Slave” director has spent the past decade honing his skills as a genre craftsman. With “Widows” and “Blitz,” McQueen has delivered two films that are not only dense but also tense and visually assured. They are big, bold thrillers that are as thematically compelling as they are purely entertaining. McQueen is, therefore, the rare director who could handle the blockbuster challenges of a Bond film and still make something that feels artistically distinct.
Like Nolan, McQueen is an auteur whose viability as a Bond director feels as dependent on Amazon’s interest in him as it does on his interest in wading into franchise waters, which he has yet to do. McQueen did work with Amazon on his “Small Axe” collection of anthology films, though. Furthermore, if the studio does decide to cast an actor of color as Bond, there are few filmmakers who are more well-suited than McQueen to tell a story about a non-white 007 that actually grapples with Britain’s complicated racial history while still delivering all the thrills, stunts and entertainment value that franchise fans will expect.
Dan Trachtenberg
Dan Trachtenberg does not have as extensive a resume as someone like Christopher Nolan or Steve McQueen. However, in his first two feature directorial outings, 2016’s “10 Cloverfield Lane” and 2022’s “Prey,” Trachtenberg has mined similar franchise success out of limited sets of ingredients. With his paranoia-soaked, contained “10 Cloverfield Lane,” Trachtenberg managed to convince audiences that J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot’s “Cloverfield” franchise had a legitimate, exciting future (a notion that 2018’s “The Cloverfield Paradox” swiftly dispelled). Six years later, he reinvented the “Predator” franchise with “Prey,” a film set in a wildly different setting than its predecessors and executed with an entirely different style.
In both cases, Trachtenberg made films that felt young and fresh, which means he is a filmmaker who could bring the kind of youthful style and energy to Bond that the franchise has long lacked. He is undoubtedly a more left-field choice than the others on this list. Twice now, though, Trachtenberg has found a new way into franchises that many viewers had previously thought had already been picked clean. Who is to say he could not pull off a similar feat with Bond? Trachtenberg’s take on 007 would no doubt be unlike any other that viewers have seen up to this point, and that alone is an exciting prospect.
James Hawes
James Hawes is not as well-known a name among moviegoers as Nolan, McQueen or McQuarrie, but he has the kind of filmography that could easily put him on Amazon’s James Bond radar. A longtime TV director, Hawes has moved into the feature film realm in recent years with the Anthony Hopkins-led 2023 drama “One Life” and the forthcoming Rami Malek action thriller “The Amateur.” He has also, notably, been tapped to be the lead director on Warner Bros. and DC Studios’ high-profile HBO series “Lanterns,” which stars fan-favorite Bond choice Aaron Pierre. It is not “The Amateur” or “Lanterns” that makes Hawes a potentially exciting choice for Bond, though.
It is, instead, his work on the first season of Apple TV+’s “Slow Horses,” which Hawes solely directed. The British spy series’ debut season is not as high-octane or blockbuster-sized as most Bond movies, but it is atmospheric and propulsive. That is due not only to the show’s reliably sharp scripts but also Hawes’ direction, which beautifully establishes “Slow Horses’” dingy, nocturnal London setting and also keeps its story moving forward at all times. Hawes’ “Slow Horses” direction is stylish but never distracting, and thanks to his work on the Apple TV+ thriller, we know that he would at least be able to get the spycraft of Bond right.
