Why Harry Potter producer David Heyman is the perfect Brit for Bond

Telegraph

26-03-2025

Despite being the driving force behind cinematic hits such as Harry Potter, Paddington and Barbie, the chances are that you have never heard of David Heyman.
That is just the way the London-born film producer likes it. 'I'm not very good at self-promotion,' he told The Telegraph in 2014. 'One of the lovely things about being a producer is being invisible.'
He may not be able to remain invisible for much longer. Heyman, 63, has agreed to reboot the James Bond franchise after Jeff Bezos's Amazon spent $1 billion (£775 million) to wrest creative control of the spy series from siblings Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson. Along with fellow star producer Amy Pascal, who is behind Challengers and the most recent Spider-Man series, Heyman has one of the most daunting tasks in Hollywood: figuring out where to take Bond after Daniel Craig's 007 was killed in a hail of missiles at the end of No Time To Die. Despite its predecessor being released in 2021 – and completed a long time before then – there is no script, no director and no star for Bond 26.
If anyone can tackle the challenge, it is Heyman. With his films grossing almost $14 billion, he is the second-most commercially successful producer of all time, with only Marvel's Kevin Feige making more at the box office. Meanwhile, four of his productions (Gravity, Marriage Story, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, and Barbie) have been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. He is that rare thing: a producer entirely trusted by studios that also has auteurs like Quentin Tarantino, Alfonso Cuarón and Greta Gerwig queuing up to work with him.
One of Heyman's best qualities is combining a populist bent with creating environments in which creative talents can flourish. It was while working as an independent producer in London that Heyman read the as-yet unpublished Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, bought the film rights and created one of the biggest franchises in history. So valuable is he to JK Rowling's Wizarding World that Heyman is also producing the forthcoming HBO TV series based on the Potter books. 'I often don't know if something will be commercial or not. Every film feels right to me, but it also feels like a gamble,' he said in 2015. 'I just know what I like, and if I like it, someone else will too. Maybe it's a kind of arrogance.'
Those who have worked with Heyman see him as having the golden touch. 'His taste connects with a big public and that is a very useful thing to have,' Christopher Hampton, whose 2013 drama The Thirteenth Tale was produced by Heyman, tells me. 'He's not [the indie darling] Jeremy Thomas, he's an absolutely mainstream producer. He's an ideal choice. He's had more experience than anyone else at steering vast franchises and bringing them into port. I think it'll be great.'
In particular, many have credited Heyman with steering the Potter films smoothly when it would not have been a surprise to see one of its child stars go wildly off the rails as they became increasingly famous. 'He's tremendously conscientious and has a terrific attention-to-detail,' says Hampton. 'I think he makes people working with him very comfortable.'
Heyman has, for the most part, avoided becoming mired in the culture wars (save for accusations from some quarters that Barbie was an example of 'anti-man feminism'), which suggests Bond is unlikely to go woke on his watch. Instead, the priority will be making a film people want to see.
He also takes risks that have, so far, paid off handsomely. Some observers raised their eyebrows when Heyman tasked Cuarón to direct The Prisoner of Azkaban, the third Potter film, soon after the Mexican filmmaker's very risqué Y tu mamá también. Yet it proved (another) hit, and Cuarón is godfather to Heyman's son, Harper. The pair reunited on Gravity (2013), an experience Heyman later described as one that 'changed my life'.
Another punt that exceeded all expectations was when Heyman hired Paul King to direct Paddington when his previous track record mostly consisted of the surrealistic sitcom The Mighty Boosh; they went onto work on Timothée Chalamet's Wonka, which took $634.7 million (£492 million) worldwide at the box office.
It is not hard to imagine Cuarón being roped in to direct the new Bond film. It is, perhaps, more difficult to see Heyman recruiting Quentin Tarantino (with whom he collaborated on Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood) but Tarantino is known to be a huge 007 fan and has long wanted to create a faithful adaptation of Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, Casino Royale.
If his track record is anything to go by, Heyman may be the one producer capable of curbing Bezos's impatience for his first Bond film. Simon Farnaby, co-writer of the Paddington films and Wonka, says that, unlike other producers, Heyman has the ability to stand up to studio bosses. 'David doesn't go for the easy option, in fact he often goes for the hard option. He just goes 'No, work harder, see if there's a better idea.' Kicking the tyres, as he calls it, until it's as good as it can be, even if that takes a bit longer than the studio might want,' he tells me. 'He's also very protective of the writers, us against the studios. We love him, because he feels like one of us trying to create the best thing we possibly can.'
While his professional life has been a succession of hits, Heyman himself has admitted that he was a 'late bloomer' when it comes to his personal life. He married the interior designer Rose Uniacke in 2006, and their son was born two years later. She also has a stepson and three children of her own from her first marriage, to the financier Robie Uniacke (who now has two children with Gone Girl star Rosamund Pike).
Heyman grew up immersed in the film world. His father, John, was an agent for the likes of Noël Coward and Elizabeth Taylor before a career as a writer and producer; his mother, Norma, was also a renowned producer who was nominated for an Oscar with Dangerous Liaisons. When he was seven, Heyman served as a page boy at the wedding of his godmother, Diana Dors, to Alan Lake.
The young Heyman was a student at the elite Westminster School, then studied art history at Harvard University while working as a runner on films during holidays. He worked as a production assistant on A Passage to India, David Lean's final film that his father helped produce, before taking jobs at Warner Brothers and United Artists in Los Angeles.
He was eventually made redundant, never having felt like he fit in amid the bright lights of Tinseltown, and following a brief stint in New York came back to Britain to produce things his way. 'Everybody told me it was career suicide,' he said in 2014. 'But I saw an opportunity in that I'd lived in America for 17 years and yet I was British, so I spoke both languages. I felt that I could be a bridge between the two, because I understood both cultures.'
Colleagues agree with this sentiment. 'David is world-class. He has delivered some of the most popular and iconic films of the 21st century and is trusted by top-level creative talent on both sides of the Atlantic,' says Danny Cohen, who worked with Heyman as an executive producer on the Fantastic Beasts films. 'He is collaborative, calm and very experienced. He understands how to reach mainstream audiences and talented people love working with him and respect him.'