Bond 26 Has a Script and Still No 007

Steven Knight has finished the first draft of Bond 26, and when Greatest Hits Radio asked if the pages were done he said, “I’m nodding silently.” Amazon MGM Studios still has not named James Bond. Producer Amy Pascal called a year-end reveal “a good bet,” even as Denis Villeneuve’s other film, Dune Part Three, opens in North American theaters on December 18.

Steven Knight Finished a First Draft This Month

Knight created Peaky Blinders. He took the Bond job in July 2025, after a meeting with Villeneuve while the director was still shooting the third Dune film. On Greatest Hits Radio he called the assignment “more than bucket list,” and said he felt he was “doing my duty for King and country by taking this thing on.”

He went further on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Asked whether he had written the film with a chosen actor in mind or from the character alone, Knight said, “It’s a bit of both.” He added, “It does make life a little bit easier if you know who that person is, but also you have to write the character, not the actor.”

I’m absolutely loving doing it. It’s an honor to be asked. And believe it’s going to be so good. I really do believe it’s going to be amazing.

Steven Knight, Bond 26 screenwriter, on Greatest Hits Radio

That is as close as anyone on the payroll has come to saying the lead is no longer a blank. It is not a name. Amazon’s line in May, when it confirmed the search was underway, still stands: “While we don’t plan to comment on specific details during the casting process, we’re excited to share more news with 007 fans as soon as the time is right.”

Pascal, promoting Spider-Man: Brand New Day in early August, was only slightly less tight. “I would say the end of the year is a good bet,” she said. She also said the team had been “really, really methodical,” and that Daniel Craig was “a hard act to follow.” She wanted something “really different that is stirring and exciting and different.”

Jack Barton Is the Name Most People Don’t Know

A late-August shortlist of six actors, due to screen-test through September, put a little-known English performer at the front of a field that still includes much louder names. Jack Barton is not a blank. He has a small role in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, television work in Knight’s SAS Rogue Heroes and in Heartstopper, and a voice part in Elden Ring’s Shadows of the Erdtree. He is the one person on the list a stranger would not clock in an airport.

The rest of the six are the names that have been in circulation for months: Jacob Elordi, Callum Turner, Harris Dickinson, Paul Mescal, and Jack Lowden. Elordi had meetings with Amazon earlier in the year and an Academy Award nomination for Frankenstein. Lowden has played MI5 officer River Cartwright on Slow Horses since 2022. Turner and Dickinson have been described, along with Elordi, as fitting “the prototype” the producers want. Mescal was the surprise on the sheet.

THE SIX NAMES IN PLAY

Elordi is Australian. The brief that has followed this search since last year pointed at a relatively unknown British actor in his late 20s or early 30s, young enough, in casting director Nina Gold’s terms, to hold the role across three or four films. That is why Elordi’s name keeps catching. It is also why Barton’s does.

Gold, who cast Daisy Ridley as Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and spent years on Game of Thrones, took over from Debbie McWilliams after Amazon’s deal for the franchise. Tom Holland sat on earlier wish lists and is not on this six. Theo James dropped out. Henry Cavill, Idris Elba, and Tom Hardy have been treated as too old for a run of several films. Fake posts still announce Cavill as Bond, because a large part of the audience wants a face it already files under “007,” and that hunger has not moved.

The Old Bond Caster Still Wants an Enigma

McWilliams spent 40 years on Bond, from For Your Eyes Only in 1981 through No Time to Die in 2021. She cast Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Craig. She has no vote now. She still described the job in June as if the rules had not changed.

It is absolutely essential that Bond retains a total enigma. I don’t want to see any of them as Bond because we now know so much about them. We want to know as little about them personally as possible, because that’s what spies are. He’s licensed to kill, and we have to believe that he can do that. If you don’t, then you’ve lost the audience.

Debbie McWilliams, former Bond casting director

She named Elordi, Turner, and Dickinson. “Timothy and Pierce weren’t particularly well known,” she said. “Daniel had had a career in independent films and a fairly colorful romantic life beforehand, but he wasn’t a household name, and that helps enormously. I want to see somebody who is completely out of the blue.”

That is the quiet argument inside the shortlist. Barton is the out-of-the-blue name. Elordi is the one a streaming audience already thinks it knows. If you cannot see James Bond in any of the six, you are looking at the same problem McWilliams named: too much biography, not enough licence to kill.

Gary Oldman told Canada’s The Morning Show in early September that “they have made their choice, but they have not announced it yet,” and that his fingers were crossed for Lowden, his Slow Horses co-star. Four days later, at the Toronto International Film Festival, he cleaned it up. “There’s six people on a shortlist. I heard a rumor that they’ve picked James Bond, but they haven’t announced it yet, which is their prerogative. So I do not know, but I’m hoping it’s Jack.” Charlie Higson, who writes the Young Bond novels for the Ian Fleming estate, has said he is not sure Lowden is the right fit.

What Knight Took From Fleming and the SAS

The actor fight is loud because the script work has been quiet. Knight has been public about method, not plot. He has not confirmed a 1950s period film, and he has not confirmed an origin story, even if both ideas have been hanging off his research.

WHAT KNIGHT HAS ACTUALLY SAID

• The novels: On BBC Radio 4 he called Ian Fleming’s books “so underrated as literature,” and said Fleming’s world is “tangibly real, and yet it’s not real. It’s almost dreamlike somehow.”
• The dialogue: He said Fleming’s talk is “so good,” and that this is “what I’m always looking out for.”
• The SAS: At Cannes he said he had been in daily conversation with members of the Special Air Service, and with “even more secret outfits,” for about ten months by May.
• The folklore: He compared Bond to Robin Hood and King Arthur, and said the character’s core is “like a diamond. You can’t touch it.”

He told Screen Daily he was talking to those units “about what they do every day. It’s all real.” Fleming, he said, “was living that life. In the war, he was doing those things. He knew people doing that stuff, going out there and killing people.” Fleming’s first Bond novel, Casino Royale, came out in 1953. The literary Bond is a Royal Navy commander who arrives at MI6 already formed. Craig’s Casino Royale showed a recruit earning 00 status. Knight’s SAS notes have been read as a possible new path into the same idea. He has not said that on the record.

January talk around the film described a Bond who “could kill you with his bare hands in a trice,” and a story drawn from the earliest novels, perhaps before the 00 number. That is still the flavor Knight is advertising. It is not a synopsis.

Villeneuve Opens Dune Part Three in December

The calendar is the other producer. Amazon named Villeneuve as director on June 25, 2025, with Amy Pascal and David Heyman producing and Tanya Lapointe as executive producer. That is 15 months without a public 007. Amazon acquired MGM in 2022, a catalogue Amazon puts at more than 4,000 films and 17,000 television shows, and closed a joint venture with Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson in March 2025 that gave the studio creative control of Bond.

Villeneuve, in the studio’s statement, called 007 “sacred territory.” Mike Hopkins, who runs Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, called him “a cinematic master.” Pascal and Heyman said Villeneuve had “been in love with James Bond movies since he was a little boy.” He still has a film to open first. Warner Bros. and Legendary’s official site lists a Dune Part Three December 18 opening in North America, with international dates beginning December 16 and early-access screenings on December 14 and 15. November and December are a press tour, not a Bond prep suite.

The working plan, repeated through the summer, is still a 2027 shoot and a year-end casting announcement. Late 2026 cameras were already a stretch in January, once Dune’s winter opening was on the board. If the name drops in December, Villeneuve will be standing in front of sand and emperors when it does. If it waits until January, the 2027 start gets tighter than the last time Bond replaced a star in public.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The pages: Knight has confirmed a first draft is complete.
• The search: Amazon opened a formal hunt in May, with Nina Gold leading it and Villeneuve on the final call.
• The window: Pascal called the end of 2026 “a good bet” for an announcement.
• The other opening: Dune Part Three is dated December 18 in North America.

WHAT’S UNCONFIRMED

• The choice: Oldman heard they had picked someone. He then said he does not know who. Amazon has announced nobody.
• The tests: Formal screen tests were slated for September and, in a later account, for later in the fall. No result has been made public.
• The start date: Early 2027 remains the working shoot plan, not a locked first-day-of-photography.

Test deals were described as going out in early September to actors still in contention. That is how a studio behaves when a shortlist is real. It is not the same thing as a press conference on a boat.

Casino Royale Shot Three Months After the Reveal

The last time Bond was recast in the open, the studio did not wait for a quiet year. Official Bond history puts Craig’s Thames unveiling in 2005 on October 14. Screen tests that summer ran under fake titles, Destiny and then Alcatraz. Henry Cavill tested on September 27. Sam Worthington went on September 28. Craig went on September 29, cut the day short, and later took the call while shopping during a break from The Invasion in Baltimore.

Cameras on Casino Royale rolled in January 2006, about three months after the boat. The film premiered on November 14, 2006. Broccoli and Wilson had already decided the series needed to come “back to Earth” after Die Another Day, and they used Fleming’s first book to do it. Craig was derided for his height, his hair, and a life preserver the Marines made him wear. McWilliams and Martin Campbell had seen that noise before. “You’re guilty until proven innocent,” Campbell said.

THE LAST OPEN RECAST

1. July 2005: Casino Royale screen tests begin under the code name Destiny.
2. September 27 to 29, 2005: Cavill, Worthington, and Craig test in a second round titled Alcatraz.
3. October 14, 2005: Craig is announced on the Thames with a Royal Marine escort.
4. January 2006: Principal photography begins, before a Bond woman or a full villain deal is in place.
5. November 14, 2006: Casino Royale premieres, and Craig becomes the first Bond actor nominated for a BAFTA for the role.

That clock still fits a December name and a 2027 shoot, but only if prep is already running under the NDAs, and only if Villeneuve can split a Dune opening from a Bond start without slipping a season. No Time to Die came out in 2021. Five years is a long gap for a series that used to land every two or three. Knight now has a draft. Gold has a six-name sheet. Pascal has a year-end bet. The one thing Bond 26 still does not have is a public 007, and the director who has to film him is about to disappear into another desert.