EON presents 2020 vision for 25th Bond… but no title…

There’s been as much gnashing of teeth as cocking of glocks where the next James Bond movie is concerned. For a long time it wasn’t even clear if Daniel Craig would be sticking around in the role for another outing  – he famously noted he’d rather ‘slash his wrists’ than return after finishing the last one, but later put the comments down to exhaustion. Then director Danny Boyle left the project over creative differences, being replaced by Cary Fukunaga late last year. But since the announcement that the film (the twenty-fifth official Bond chapter in the main series) would miss its November 2019 date and was being rescheduled for February 2020, it’s all gone a bit quiet on the secret service front.

That changed today with major(ish) details being released by EON, the company behind the films who had teased that their news would be coming live Thursday at 5:10am (PST) / 8:10am (EST) / 1:10pm (UK) from a suitable location (the GoldenEye estate where Ian Fleming created the character and a Jamaican beach!). The announcement came a few minutes late but, as previously mentioned, alongside the returning Craig (for whom this will be his final 007 outing), Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Ben Wishaw and Lea Seydoux will all be reprising their characters (‘M’, Moneypenny, ‘Q’ and Madeleine Swann respectively). Newcomers include The Flash‘s Dali Benssalah, Velvet Buzzsaw‘s Billy Magnussen, Blade Runner 2049‘s Ana de Armas, Captain Marvel‘s Lashana Lynch, and Quicksand‘s David Dencik.

It was confirmed that Phoebe Waller-Bridge was part of the writing team, that Bohemian Rhapsody star Rami Malek will be the main villain of the piece and that the film will begin in Jamaica with Bond off active service duty.

And the title..?  The rumours were that it was to be called Shatterhand… but after all the speculation and build-up… the EON team actually refused to confirm what the title was going to be…  saving that for another day.