With Daniel Craig’s 007 now earning some well-deserved rest after a decade and a half of trotting around the globe hunting and being hunted, it is time for another to step in and fill the shoes of the immortal James Bond. But as time moves forward, the unlikeliest of candidates aka Robert Pattinson surfaces as potential contenders for the role that will witness the very first resurrection of the character and a reinvention at the same time.
With Barbara Broccoli intently set on redesigning the very fabric of the literary character, the 007 franchise will be subjected to its first proper reboot since its advent in the 1960s with Terence Young and Sean Connery.
Robert Pattinson Nominates Himself For James Bond
It is not rare for an actor to advocate themselves strongly for a role that they feel very passionate about or believe they can do justice to by taking on the part. However, it is very rare for Robert Pattinson to do so. For one, the Twilight actor is painfully grounded to blatantly pitch himself in the role of one of the greatest characters to exist on the page and in film.
But given his performance in radically performative films that lie somewhere between the categories of “indie” and “mainstream,” it was only time that someone with a keen eye would latch onto him as the next big name in the industry. Danny Boyle, director of such movies as Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, and 28 Days Later, saw the potential in Pattinson after watching him in the sci-fi horror drama, High Life, claiming: “It was so bizarre because I was sitting there thinking: ‘Oh my God, they should get him to be the next Bond.’” But Robert Pattinson had other ideas:
“Yeah, I’d definitely like to go for Bond, but in more like 20 years. There’d be nothing worse than, like, ‘let’s get a fresh-faced Bond.’ That would be the worst idea in the world. It would be ridiculous to reinvent it as some young posh kid… After Daniel Craig, you have to have some baggage. I’d have to be tortured in the first few scenes. I’d have to do the first film with one arm or something.”
At the time, Robert Pattinson was 26 and too young and green to be seriously considered for the role of 007, especially one that was supposed to go down the path that Daniel Craig depicted in his tenured run from 2006 to 2021. Now in his 30s and with critically acclaimed roles to his name, the actor is perfect for taking on the next iteration of Bond. However, his current investment in DC’s Batman could make it difficult to work out a timeframe balancing his involvement with the two great franchises.
Where Does Hollywood Currently Stand With 007?
There has been a multitude of actors with a penchant for embodying literary and historical figures, establishing themselves forever in the history books while imprinting their uniquely individual signatures on the character they borrow for a limited time as their own. Craig’s impersonation of 007 was revolutionary for being one of the most emotionally attuned and progressive versions of the spy – an approach that was both hated and loved by the people as the decade moved forward.
But now, as the world approaches a new era of socio-cultural revolution, proprietors of the James Bond IP have become aware of the time’s needs before contributing to the next revolutionary phase of the Bond cinematic canon. As such, Broccoli calls the next 007 film a “reinvention of who he is” and a task of such magnitude is supposed to take time. For now, the producers are busy charting out a path for the coming arc of the new and improved James Bond. Casting is yet to begin and production dates have not been set.
Source: The Sun [via Yahoo Entertainment]
