Hiring Denis Villeneuve Buys Benefit of the Doubt That Amazon Might Not F*** Up Their First James Bond Movie
It would appear that Amazon, MGM and friends know that the next installment of the still-popular 007 series cannot succeed on brand loyalty and IP awareness alone.
With the first trailer for Ryan Gosling’s The Hail Mary Project* – the Chris Miller and Phil Lord-directed flagship flick for the studio’s ambitious “movie movies” slate - dropping on Monday, and word that the next James Bond flick will have Denis Villeneuve in the director’s chair, it’s a decent end-of-month blip for Amazon MGM Studios. Yes, the studio still has the same problem as Disney, namely having made the hilariously avoidable mistake of having a big-budget tentpole flick fronted (or heavily supported) by Jared Leto only for – presumption of innocence notwithstanding – one of the worst kept secrets in Hollywood to (potentially and finally?) become mainstream news. I’m sympathetic to Disney and Amazon. After all, Leto was cast as Skeletor in Masters of the Universe and Ares in Tron: Ares (both projects that would be commercial longshots even under better circumstances) just after headlining the most acclaimed and successful comic book superhero movie since The Dark Knight. But I digress.
Even noting his small role in Blade Runner 2047 (another blockbuster, strong reviews and post-theatrical fandom notwithstanding), Villeneuve likely won’t find much room for Mr. Leto (who… hot take… was perfectly fine as The Joker in Suicide Squad) within Universal Exports. I do expect David Dastmalchian – whose breakout role was, ironically, as an escaped mental patient in Chris Nolan’s Batman sequel – to appear briefly and die badly. It’s what the Late Night with the Devil star deserves for stealing my childhood dream of playing Murdoc in an updated MacGyver show. That’s enough absurdist digressions. Getting Denis Villeneuve to direct the first post-Daniel Craig installment is a show of force and a declaration of intent. He’s the biggest director the studio could have realistically ensnared, and the choice to hire him (as opposed to a lower-profile and/or comparatively less currently-powerful journeyman like Paul King, Edward Berger and Edgar Wright) shows that Amazon understands what’s at stake with the 26th 007 adventure.