Dune director Denis Villeneuve to take over James Bond franchise

Times

6 hours ago

After years of wrangling, hesitation and mystery, Amazon has announced the director for the next James Bond film.
Denis Villeneuve, best known for his work on the science fiction movies Dune and Blade Runner 2049, will take the helm, also serving as executive producer.
'I'm a die-hard Bond fan,' Villeneuve said in Amazon MGM Studios' announcement on Wednesday evening.
'To me, he's sacred territory. I intend to honour the tradition and open the path for many new missions to come. This is a massive responsibility, but also incredibly exciting for me and a huge honour.'
Villeneuve, 57, is a French-Canadian director and screenwriter known for his adaptations of fictional novels into film.
He was nominated for an Oscar for Arrival, a 2016 sci-fi drama based on a short story by Ted Chiang about a linguist employed by the United States army to communicate with extraterrestrials.
His next projects were Dune: Part One and Dune: Part Two, an adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel of the same name. The first film received six Oscars and grossed $400 million at the box office worldwide; the sequel won two Oscars and grossed $714 million.
It was a slick move into Hollywood, having begun his career making French-language films in Canada.
'Few filmmakers of the 21st century have risen to prominence and prestige with the forcefulness of Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve, whose seemingly unstoppable career has been bolstered by a steady balance of critical respect and commercial success,' wrote the industry publication IndieWire in 2017 as he broke onto the scene.
'In fact, Christopher Nolan [director of Oppenheimer and the The Dark Knight] is the only other person who comes to mind, and the similarities between the two of them are hard to ignore.'
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Amazon took control of the distribution rights of the James Bond franchise in 2021, after its acquisition of MGM Studios for $8.5 billion. The deal did not, however, give it power over creative direction.
In the years since, Amazon was seemingly locked in a stalemate with the Broccoli family, who had produced the Bond films ever since 1962 when the first one, Dr No, was released. In February, the Broccoli family was reported to have been paid $1 billion by Amazon MGM Studios to cede creative control.
In March the divorce was finalised with Barbara Broccoli, 65, and her half-brother Michael G Wilson, 83, heirs to Albert 'Cubby' Broccoli.
'We are deeply grateful to Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli for their remarkable stewardship and vision,' a spokesman for the Bond estate said at the time. 'Their imagining of James Bond on screen has created one of the world's great film franchises and has led the incredible success of the British film industry.
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'We are enormously excited about the next phase of the James Bond story on film under Amazon's creative leadership and are confident in their new stewardship of Ian Fleming's extraordinary creation. James Bond will return!'
Villeneuve said he had been an avid consumer of the Bond stories since he was a child. 'Some of my earliest movie-going memories are connected to 007,' he said. 'I grew up watching James Bond films with my father, ever since Dr No with Sean Connery.'
The Québécois director is known for his long takes, muted colour palette, extreme shadows and drawn-out periods of silence on screen.
There is still speculation about when the next Bond movie will be released. The most recent, premiering in 2021, marked the end of Daniel Craig's tenure as 007.