I don’t always agree with Barbara Broccoli’s decisions, but I admire her a great deal with how she’s acted as advocate and caretaker for James Bond as a franchise and “property.” Broccoli and her step-brother Michael Wilson own the James Bond character and the franchise. The Broccoli family has retained a completely unique position in today’s entertainment landscape – they are not lured by fast cash, they are not interested in over-leveraging their franchise and they are not known for tolerating fools. Wilson is less visible than Barbara Broccoli, who is the more public face of Bond-ownership. The 007 franchise had a home at MGM for decades, then MGM was sold to Amazon. Because of the unique terms around the Bond franchise, all roads still go through Broccoli and Wilson, and as it turns out, Broccoli f–king hates everyone at Amazon. And that’s why no one has found the new Bond, and that’s why there’s been no move to reboot the series after Daniel Craig. From the Wall Street Journal:
Nearly three years after Amazon acquired the right to release Bond movies through its $6.5 billion purchase of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio, the relationship between the family that oversees the franchise and the e-commerce giant has all but collapsed. The decaying partnership has scuttled any near-term hope of a new Bond film—a black eye for Amazon’s ambitions in Hollywood, since at the time of the MGM sale, the Bond franchise represented a significant share of the $6.5 billion the company paid for the studio.
When it comes to Bond’s future, the power lies in the hands of Barbara Broccoli, who inherited the control from her father, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, and who for 30 years has decided when a new Bond movie can go into production. She has told friends she doesn’t trust algorithm-centric Amazon with a character she helped to mythologize through big-screen storytelling and gut instinct. This fall, she characterized the status of a new movie in dire terms—no script, no story and no new Bond.
To friends, Broccoli has characterized her thoughts on Amazon this way: “These people are f— idiots.”
The Broccoli family’s control of James Bond has few comparisons in contemporary Hollywood, where cherished characters are gobbled up by conglomerates eager to exploit them across screens, toy shelves and theme parks. For decades, studio executives have salivated over the chance to do the same with Bond. Broccoli, 64, had already turned down TV shows, videogames and at least one tie-in casino before Amazon entered the picture. For much of her career, Broccoli has made those calls with her stepbrother, 82-year-old Michael Wilson. She has emerged more recently as the primary steward of Bond as Wilson nears retirement.
Broccoli has complained that Amazon isn’t a good home for Bond, since the company’s core business is selling everything from toilet paper to vacuums—a perspective Amazon executives find unfair. But since she makes the creative calls that come first—script, casting, story—Broccoli can hold Bond hostage from Amazon for as long as she sees fit. In doing so, she quotes a refrain attributed to her father, a film agent who’d sold hair driers before he secured the rights to adapt Ian Fleming’s novels. “Don’t have temporary people make permanent decisions.”
The company’s tech-centric focus loomed over the franchise as soon as merger discussions began. Some executives at MGM were concerned that Bond and other titles would be given at-home launches in an era of ascendant streaming services like Amazon Prime Video. Before agreeing to the deal, MGM made sure that Amazon was committed to releasing Bond on the big screen, a critical point for Broccoli, who waited out 18 months of Covid-19 lockdowns to play “No Time to Die” in theaters. Amazon has held firm to its commitment to release Bond in theaters, should a new movie come together.
Broccoli and Wilson had been looped in on the deal before it was announced. Broccoli had reservations, but didn’t want to complicate what many in Hollywood viewed as a massive payout for MGM’s owners—plus, she and her family would retain final say over all creative matters, including who plays Bond. Before the purchase closed, Amazon executives brainstormed among themselves how Bond could be plugged into their machine. Would Amazon produce a James Bond TV show for its Prime Video service? What about a Moneypenny spinoff? Or a TV spinoff centered on a female 007? Broccoli’s response to such enthusiasm, one friend said, is often the same: Did you read the contract?
There’s so much more in the WSJ piece – Broccoli goes with her gut instincts when casting a new James Bond, while Amazon executives freak out over anything they deem too “risky,” like casting a virtual unknown, a blonde indie-film actor as 007, which is what happened when Broccoli chose Daniel Craig. Broccoli also gets a say in stories and villains, obviously, and Amazon can’t even push her to agree what a new Bond villain should look like. It’s so funny to me that Amazon executives were dreaming about getting their hands on the Bond franchise and doing what Kathleen Kennedy did to Star Wars – make a sh-tload of money but burn through the core stories, disappointing fans and causing Star Wars fatigue. Broccoli knows that the easiest way to ruin the franchise is by giving the greenlight to streaming shows like “M: After Hours” or “(Spy)crafting with Q.” Mostly, I just enjoy the fact that Barbara Broccoli is one of the rare people in “Hollywood” with a unique kind of power and authority and she’s not selling out to the highest bidder.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
