Daniel Craig’s Replacement As New James Bond Is Secretly Already Chosen? Truth Accidentally Revealed
Taron Egerton from the Kingsman franchise confirms that he will not be playing the next James Bond, but Aaron Taylor-Johnson from Kick-Ass might already have the part.
Even well before Daniel Craig officially retired as James Bond, fans couldn’t stop speculating about who was going to become our next onscreen 007. One name that frequently comes up is Taron Egerton, which makes sense: we have already seen him play as a young British superspy in the Kingsman franchise, and now that he’s a bit older, he might be the perfect age to order an onscreen martini (shaken, not stirred) when he’s not abusing technology from Q Branch in an effort to save the world. However, Egerton admitted in an interview with Total Film that not only is he not going to play James Bond, but “I’ve just never been one of the guys that they’re looking at.”
In this case, “they” refers to the Broccolis (Albert Broccoli and, later, Barbara Broccoli) who run EON Productions, the production company responsible for bringing the James Bond movies to life ever since the original movie, Dr. No. Egerton is very candid about how little he seems to be on the Broccoli radar for playing Bond or just about anything else. “I’ve never met the Broccolis,” he said and continued, “They’ve never inquired about me.”
Fortunately, the young actor doesn’t hold it against the Broccolis or EON Productions that they don’t want him to portray the world’s most famous spy onscreen. In fact, the demure Egerton admits that “I just don’t think I’m the right person for that” particular role and concede that there are “much, much, much better candidates for that role than me.” But he also believes the franchise produces “brilliant films,” and he’s eager to be sitting in the audience when the next James Bond film rolls around.
But that brings us back to the original question: if Taron Egerton isn’t going to play James Bond, then who will (and no, the answer isn’t Idris Elba)? As we previously and exclusively reported, Aaron Taylor-Johnson is in final discussions to play as Bond, James Bond. In fact, this actor has already had three meetings and a screen test to determine just how well he’ll fit into this fan-favorite franchise, which means that he has garnered far more attention from the powers that be at EON Productions than Egerton ever did.
And in many ways, Aaron Taylor-Johnson is the perfect casting choice for James Bond. We have previously seen him play the title character in the Kick-Ass series of films and briefly play Quicksilver in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which means he has the genre film action chops that a Bond performance requires. Most recently, Taylor-Johnson starred in Bullet Train and played Tangerine, a kind of quirky assassin, a role which gave him plenty of room to balance quirky humor and bloody violence (two staples of any good onscreen James Bond).
On top of that, Aaron Taylor-Johnson is only 32 years old, which puts him in the sweet spot to play James Bond. In other words, he’s old enough to convincingly portray an experienced superspy, but he’s also young enough to headline several different Bond features before he looks too old for the role (to see what “too old for Bond” looks like, go watch those last couple of Roger Moore Bond films…it’s like they filmed a senior citizen’s workouts and called them movies). However, this young actor being cast as Bond is not official yet, so until then, consider this casting news “for your eyes only” before the EON makes the announcement.
