James Bond is going to be reinvented yet again for his next outing

Kiss the rumors goodbye.

No, that isn’t the title of the next installment in the James Bond 007 saga.

It’s the steely-eyed truth that no matter who you were hoping and pining for to take the throne over from Daniel Craig to play the next James Bond, it’s likely not happening. At least not any time soon.

Idris Elba, Tom hardy, Henry Cavill, Lashana Lynch, Cillian Murphy, or whoever else pops to mind (I hear Adam Sandler is doing drama again these days), put them all on the backburner, the way far back one, because casting isn’t even close, according to Bond producer Barbara Broccoli. Not only that, the warden of Ian Fleming’s character says another reinvention is in order.

Simply going a different direction with Bond is out of the picture. The powers behind Bond want to “reinvent” Bond and take him, and whoever will be cast in the role, down a totally different pathway (albeit still walking past the inside of the barrel of a gun with a cool song playing behind it).

“There isn’t a script and we can’t come up with one until we decide how we’re going to approach the next film because, really, it’s a reinvention of Bond. We’re reinventing who he is and that takes time.”

“It’s a big decision,” Broccoli said in an interview with Variety earlier this year. “It’s not just casting a role. It’s about a whole rethink about where we’re going.”

Broccoli was speaking in London as part of the BFI Fellowships, along with her brother and Bond co-producer Michael G. Wilson, where many familiar faces from Bond’s past were in attendance, including Ralph Fiennes and Naomie Harris, with video messages from Judie Dench, Rami Malek, Sam Mendes, and Craig himself as the evening was a quasi-tribute to Broccoli and Bond.  

Fiennes even joked that after technically Broccoli and Wilson killed off Bond in No Time To Die, that his character, M, and Moneypenny, played by Harris, are ready to reprise their roles whoever and whenever the next Bond is.

“Naomie and I are the people to fix it. You find him and we’ll train him,” he said, according to Deadline.

For fans of Bond, and Craig, at least the next Knives Out film is on the horizon, so there’s no time to cry.