Is The Wait For The New James Bond Finally Over?

Any Bond actor has to tick a few boxes: sophisticated, elegant, able to swan about a casino floor and play a couple of baccarat games or poker with a Bond aura like Brosnan, Craig, and Connery in years gone by.

Although the dynamic of online casino gaming has meant that land-based options have had a bit of competition on their hands over the last two decades, online casino table games are available within a few seconds from a smartphone or desktop. In contrast, if you’re trying to capture the Bond look and aura, you’ll have to throw on your tuxedo, stroll through, and look at some of the casino table games in person.

So, could the rumored names pull off the Bond look in the casino and pull off his casino table game flair? We’d say so. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Paul Mescal, and Henry Cavill are the three men most closely associated with landing the role, and all of them would look suave pulling that off.

The recent AI-generated Henry Cavill trailer may have fooled some. While Casino Royale director Martin Campbell stated that Cavill would have been more or less guaranteed the role had Daniel Craig not blown everyone away in his audition, the Jersey-born star, who later went on to play Superman, had to lick his wounds and wait a decade and a half to be considered again.

That’s an answer so many people say regarding their Bond pick - “they can’t see it” - it’s quite ambiguous. There is a tinge of truth to it; sometimes, an actor must have a Bond look. However, Pierce Brosnan was criticized before he’d even starred in his first Bond role, as somebody who people “couldn’t picture” in the role. One of the most significant driving forces behind the next Bond will be the directors they’ve consulted to make the next movie.

Talks are underway for the 26th installment of the franchise, with Sir Steve McQueen touted as the next director. As a champion for inclusivity and representation in film, many believe that McQueen would push hard for a black actor to play James Bond.

Although Idris Elba has been heavily linked with the role, another black British actor—Damson Idris —is currently ahead of him in the betting odds. However, he does sit behind Mescal, Cavill, and Taylor-Johnson as the bookmakers' favorite to land the coveted acting role.

When Craig was announced in 2005, the bookies were convinced it would be Clive Owen—an actor with a very Bond energy. As the press speculated, a variety of names were thrown into the hat, such as Dominic West, perhaps best known for his portrayal of Jimmy McNulty in the legendary HBO show The Wire, which celebrated its 20th anniversary a couple of years ago.

At one point, Brosnan was back in the mix before Craig was announced, and the media fanfare certainly doesn’t help matters. It puts into perspective how long it’s been since there’s been a new Bond; there was no Twitter or X as it's now called; Facebook was in its early days, and smartphones weren’t a thing - the news cycle was much different.

Nowadays, you only have to browse a search engine or a hashtag to hear someone’s two cents on the matter—mine included! Theo James, James Norton, and Richard Madden are other names tied to the potential role - but the bookies are putting them at increasingly higher odds each day. If you’re looking for a real wild card, Harry Styles, Benedict Cumberbatch, and even Chris Hemsworth have had their names bandied about - but don’t hold your breath on any of them getting it.