Since the shocking news dropped that Jeff Bezos’ Amazon MGM Studios would assume creative control over the James Bond film franchise, commentators and fans have wondered why.
Why would the Broccoli family, which has long held the rights to Bond movies through their company, EON, cede control of the film series to a tech partner they’ve been at odds with?
Two possibilities have emerged.
First, EON’s Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, the stepson and daughter of EON producer Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli, may have reached a point of creative exhaustion.
There could be something to this theory.
According to Puck’s Matthew Belloni, the 83-year-old Wilson and 64-year-old Broccoli were having difficulty figuring out their next step after 2021’s No Time to Die.
A second reason could be Amazon’s impatience with EON.
In December 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported that Barbara Broccoli baulked when Amazon Studios executive Jennifer Salke proposed several Bond spinoff projects, including a Bond series with a female lead, for Prime Video.
Perhaps frustrated with the stalemate, Amazon may have made Wilson and Broccoli an offer they couldn’t refuse to get production of Bond content rolling.
The speculation is certainly intriguing.
But a more central question shouldn’t be overlooked: the "what".
What, precisely, has Amazon MGM acquired? And what can it actually do with the Bond story?
The Bond franchise began in 1953, not with a film but with a novel, Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale.
One year later it was adapted for American TV as a live anthology show. Four years after that, in 1958, a popular Bond comic strip made its debut.
It was only in 1962, with Dr No, starring Sean Connery, that the now-iconic film series began.
Since then, James Bond has been spun off into a children’s animated show, choose-your-own-adventure books, a Young Bond novel series, video games, radio dramas and more.
Here’s what’s crucial: with its new deal, Amazon MGM has a controlling stake only in the rights that EON holds.
EON has licensed the right to produce future films and TV shows from Fleming since 1961.
EON secured worldwide merchandising rights in 1964 and production rights to video games in the early 1990s.
Other 007 media — the literary, comic and audio series — are managed by the Fleming Estate and Ian Fleming Publications.
The James Bond media franchise is what I call a shared rights and licensing network.
No one company controls all of the Bond rights or produces all of Bond media.
Though this arrangement is a complicated one, the sharing and licensing of rights has allowed Bond to emerge as a lucrative product line.
It now boasts over 330 original stories in 72 years of media production. In other words, Bond is much more than the 25 films released by EON.
James Bond exists in many different worlds and leads many different lives.
The effect of Bond’s shared structure is what I dub "threaded storytelling".
The novels present various versions of Bond’s life, at different points in history.
The film series creates two of its own. The comic series offers yet more lives of 007.
Each version of Bond runs alongside the others in the market, focusing on a Bond character who exists only within his unique story world.
This gives fans an unpredictable, ever-expanding canon of stories to follow and even compare.
The deal between Amazon MGM and EON awaits regulatory approval in the US and UK.
If it goes through, Amazon MGM will have a strong property on its hands.
Over the decades, EON has reinforced certain elements to the character and the story. James Bond is a debonair hitman. MI6 chief M gives him high-stakes missions. MI6 armorer Q fits him with the latest gadgets. And Bond lives large, enjoying beautiful women, fine dining and Omega timepieces.
Amazon MGM is unlikely to tinker with these elements.
They’re also likely to preserve the movies’ "Bond formula" — the gun barrel visual that kicks off each film, elaborately designed credit sequences, film-specific theme songs, and the closing title card that reads, "James Bond Will Return".
The more intriguing possibility is whether Amazon will try to create a more unified Bond universe, akin to the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Yes, the Fleming Estate will still manage the novels, comics and radio but with creative control over EON’s rights, Amazon MGM could develop an elaborate transmedia strategy never before explored in this franchise.
• Colin Burnett is an associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, Washington University in St. Louis.
