Five years after Daniel Craig bowed out, the search for the next 007 is down to a final round of screen tests in London — and two fan favorites are out.
By Becky Monroe — The Cinephile, CelebnMusic247
The longest casting saga in movies is nearly over. Five years after Daniel Craig closed his era in No Time To Die, Amazon MGM Studios is holding final screen tests for the next James Bond in London, with the tests expected to begin Friday, October 23 and continue into next week, according to reporting from The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline carried by The Times and CBR.
The named finalists are three. Callum Turner, of Apple TV’s Masters of the Air, and Slow Horses star Jack Lowden are due to take part, The Hollywood Reporter has claimed, per The Times. Deadline adds Josh O’Connor — Emmy winner for playing Prince Charles in The Crown, and co-lead of Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers — with as many as four actors in the final round in total and the identity of any fourth man still unreported. Per The Times, the tests are understood to have three components: stunts, camera presence and dialogue. The round was originally planned for earlier in October before scheduling conflicts pushed it back.
Just as notable is who is not testing. THR reports that two of the internet’s loudest fan picks — Sinners star Jack O’Connell and Saltburn and Euphoria star Jacob Elordi — are not among the finalists, despite months of speculation that had Elordi near the top of the list. Names linked earlier in the process, including SAS: Rogue Heroes actor Jack Barton and Gladiator II’s Paul Mescal, have also fallen away.
The film itself is already staffed at the top: Denis Villeneuve directs, Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight writes, and Amy Pascal and David Heyman produce — the first Bond of the Amazon MGM era, after Amazon took full creative control of the franchise in 2025. Pascal has said the new Bond will be recruited before the end of this year, and she is not pretending the job is simple. “Daniel Craig is a hard act to follow,” she said in August. “And it’s got to be something really different that is stirring and exciting and different.” Amazon, for its part, is saying nothing about names: a spokesman pointed to earlier statements confirming the hunt is under way and promised more news “as soon as the time is right.”
Knight, who also wrote SAS: Rogue Heroes, has framed the assignment in almost patriotic terms, telling the BBC that working on Bond feels like doing his “duty for King and country,” and that the franchise’s British identity is exactly what he loves about it: “It’s its own universe and it’s its own franchise, so there are certain rules. Obviously you have to move it along, but I love where it sits.”
The 247 Take — Three finalists, three genuinely different Bonds: Turner’s square-jawed classicism, Lowden’s coiled, anti-Bond edge, O’Connor’s louche charm. Whoever survives the stunt test inherits the hardest brief in franchise movies — replace Craig without imitating him, for a studio that has never made one of these before. The decision lands before Christmas. The argument about it starts now.
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Sources: The Times | CBR | Radio Times | ScreenRant
