Ben Whishaw, who played Q in three James Bond movies alongside Daniel Craig, does not expect an offer for another installment.
“I don’t think I’m going to be in the next one,” the actor recently shared with BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg (per Deadline). “I think they’re going to start all over again, and with a new cast, a completely new cast. I think that’s my hunch, but I don’t know. I have no idea.”
“I think it might need a new lease of life and a whole new group of people. But if they asked me, I would do it, of course,” he added.
Rumors about the Bond series’ next phase ran wild after 2021’s ‘No Time to Die,’ which ended Craig’s run as the British spy. Reports particularly mentioned Aaron Taylor-Johnson as a frontrunner for the lead role in recent months.
Ex-Bond actors like Pierce Brosnan showed their support for the possible casting so far, though neither the studio nor Taylor-Johnson confirmed the news.
Meanwhile, some people claimed new James Bond would be a woman as the franchise stepped toward the idea by casting Lashana Lynch as 007 in Craig’s last gig. But producer Barbara Broccoli shut down the possibility in a 2020 chat with ‘Variety.’
“James Bond can be of any color, but he is male,” she said. “I believe we should be creating new characters for women – strong female characters. I’m not particularly interested in taking a male character and having a woman play it. I think women are far more interesting than that.”
No new James Bond film is officially in production at the moment.
