Ten days after final screentests for the most coveted role in British cinema, one actor has emerged as a strong favourite to don the 007 tux for Denis Villeneuve’s forthcoming film. The bookmaker William Hill has cut the odds of Callum Turner being named as the next James Bond from 3/1 to 8/13, with previous favourite Jack Lowden now at 2/1. Josh O’Connor, who also auditioned recently, is now at 9/2, with Richard Madden, Robert Pattinson and Joe Alwyn at 16/1.
The flurry of activity has been prompted by news over the weekend that Turner had resigned as director of his own production company, Twentytwo Films Ltd, which he founded last August with his wife, the musician Dua Lipa. Some took this as an indication that Turner’s movie priorities may now lie elsewhere. On Saturday, the couple also posted to social media photographs of themselves dressed for Halloween sipping martinis – the signature cocktail of the British spy.
And in a new interview, former James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan also endorsed Turner, who played his son in 2017 drama The Only Living Boy in New York. They all have a voice and a physique, and a presence on film. They all have longevity as actors, all of these young men.” Turner, Lowden and O’Connor are all 36-year-old white, heterosexual film stars, suggesting that whichever of them wins the role, the approach adopted by incoming owners of the brand Amazon MGM will not stray far from Ian Fleming’s template.
Speaking to GQ, Lowden said the rumours linking him to the role were “all very flattering. It’s nice to be mentioned – for any role – and I’m just not really going to add to the noise.” Meanwhile, on Tuesday O’Connor also sought to simultaneous embrace and play down the speculation. Turner began his career as a model before breaking though in films such as John Boorman’s 2014 drama Queen and Country, and the second and third Fantastic Beasts films, The Crimes of Grindelwald and The Secrets of Dumbledore, in which he played Newt Scamander’s brother.
More recent films include George Clooney’s rowing saga The Boys in the Boat (2023), and love triangle romcom Eternity (2025) opposite Elizabeth Olsen and Miles Teller. Turner will next be seen in the satire Rosebush Pruning, which premiered at Berlin earlier this year, and in cyberpunk series Neuromancer. He is currently in production on two films: Possession, a horror from the director behind the Smile franchise, and Marielle Heller’s The Comebacker, a sports comedy with Tom Hanks.
If named, Turner will take over the role from Daniel Craig, whose last outing as 007, No Time to Die, was released in 2021. The narrative for the 25th film in the series lent the franchise a sense of closure, with Bond apparently dying, before a title card promised: “James Bond will return.” In February 2025, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, heirs to producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and longtime stewards of the Bond films, sold the rights for “creative control” over the franchise to Amazon MGM Studios in a deal worth more than $1bn. Pascal and David Heyman were then brought on as producers of the new film, followed by Dune’s Villeneuve as director and Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight as screenwriter.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
