The other week, we learned that Bond 25 AKA Shatterhand was finally a go, with a release date pencilled in for November 2019. With that came the unconfirmed but probably reliable report that Daniel Craig will return for the film as well, marking his fifth time in the role of James Bond. If a new rumor is to be believed, however, it looks like the actor may be staying on board the franchise a bit longer than we initially thought.
According to The Sun (via FemaleFirst), Bond producer Barbara Broccoli has managed to convince Craig to stay on for two more outings. This will come as a surprise to anyone who’s followed the actor’s love/hate relationship with the part over the years. Infamously, he once joked that he would rather “slit his wrists” than suit up again, though he later explained that he was just feeling fatigued by the worldwide press tour for Spectre when he said that.
If this report is true, it’s worth considering Craig’s age as well. Currently, he’s 49, meaning he’ll be 51 by the time his fifth Bond movie hits cinemas. That’s a fairly advanced age to be playing the secret agent and with Bond 26 likely arriving two or three years after that, Craig will be pushing his mid-50s by the time he bows out of the role.
This will either put him at the same age as or older than Sean Connery in his final appearance as 007 (1983’s Never Say Never Again) and perilously close to Roger Moore’s age of 57 in 1985’s A View to a Kill. On both of those occasions, critics and fans alike agreed that the actors were past their prime and too old for the role, so one has to wonder if it would really be the right move for Craig to stay on the job this long.
Before we get into too much of a debate over it, however, we should remember that this is only an unsubstantiated rumour and until we hear more, it should be taken with a grain of salt. All we know for sure right now is that, whatever form he takes, James Bond will return in November 2019.
