The name’s Rock, The Rock.
It’s potentially the future of the James Bond franchise, as Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has officially confirmed he’d like to be the next 007.
“I would like to follow in his footsteps and be the next Bond. I don’t want to be a villain. Gotta be Bond,” Dwayne told Esquire, referencing his grandfather Peter Maivia, who played a villain in the 1967 Sean Connery Bond film You Only Live Twice.
Speculation about who will take on the role has been building ever since Daniel Craig confirmed he’d be hanging up his tux following this year’s release of No Time To Die.
Every time a new Bond actor leaves the role, there’s a period where fans begin their guesswork about who will pick up Bond’s penchant for binge drinking and gadgets next. Other names to have been thrown around ahead of the next phase of Bond include Richard Madden, Idris Elba and Rege-Jean Page.
When Daniel Craig took on the role in 2006 some Bond purists criticised his appointment because he was the first blonde Bond. An entire website was even set up to campaign to have the actor removed from the role.
If Dwayne got the role, he’d be the first actor of colour to play Bond. Speaking to Radio Times this year and weighing in on a debate around whether future iterations of Bond should be racially diverse, or played by a female or non-binary actor, Daniel Craig said: “The answer to that is very simple. There should simply be better parts for women and actors of colour.
“Why should a woman play James Bond when there should be a part just as good as James Bond, but for a woman?”
Bond producer Barbara Brocolli said something similar recently. “James Bond is a male character,” she told the Press Association. “I hope that there will be many, many films made with women, for women, by women, about women. I don’t think we have to take a male character and have a woman portray him. So yes, I see him as male.”
Sean Connery assumed the role of Bond for the big screen in 1962 with the first film adaptation of Ian Flemings novels, Dr No. George Lazenby followed in 1969 with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Roger Moore played Bond throughout most of the 1970s and into the 1980s, when Timothy Dalton took on Bond for two films before Pierce Brosnan took over in the 1990s.
Daniel Craig was eventually celebrated by many fans for how he made Bond more emotional and vulnerable than before. Speaking to GQ ahead of leaving the role, Daniel Craig said: “I hope he’s changed a lot while I’ve been part of him.”
Speaking of his intention to drive change through his representation of Bond, Craig added: “He’s flawed and his attitude towards the world and women is questionable.”
Speaking earlier this year, Bond producer Barbara Broccoli confirmed to Radio 4 that the search for the new actor won’t begin until 2022. She said “we’re not thinking about that at all.”
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