With speculation currently running rife, Alan Partridge is the latest public figure to speak out about who should be the next James Bond.
In a new in-character Q&A interview in The Guardian, the Steve Coogan creation was asked whether he himself would accept the offer to play the spy if the chance came around.
“Wouldn’t happen,” he replied.
“There’s a sequence to the casting of 007. They choose an actor from one of the smaller UK nations, then from a non-British Commonwealth country and finally an Englishman – and repeat. Actor from smaller UK nation (Connery, Scotland), non-British actor (Lazenby, Australia), Englishman (Moore, England). Sequence completed, we go again: actor from smaller UK nation (Dalton, Wales), non-British actor (Brosnan, Ireland), Englishman (Craig, England).”
“So, you see, I couldn’t be the next Bond. It’ll be James Nesbitt (Northern Ireland), Ryan Gosling (Canada), then an Englishman. Assuming Nesbitt and Gosling do three movies each (one every three years), the earliest I could take the role would be 2041, when I’d be in my 80s. That’s almost certainly too old.”
“While I have ideas as to how the role could be slightly rewritten to accommodate the secret agent’s mobility and bladder issues, even then I think it very, very unlikely they’d choose me. Given all that? Not going to happen … probably not going to happen.”
It is not just the identity of the actor playing the title role that has people speculating. This week, Christopher Nolan confirmed that he will not be directing the next instalment in the franchise, despite being a major fan.
He said there was “sadly no truth” to those rumours, adding: “The influence of those movies in my filmography is embarrassingly apparent. It would be an amazing privilege to do one,” Nolan said. “At the same time, when you take on a character like that you’re working with a particular set of constraints.”
Earlier this month, Bond producer Greg Wilson confirmed that they are not yet working on the next film at this stage. “There will be another Bond some day, but we’re not actively developing it,” he said.
And with rumours flying around about who might play the next Bond, series producer Barbara Broccoli addressed the new phase of the story following the character’s death at the end of No Time To Die by saying, “It’s gonna take a while for us to get – you know, it’s a whole new reinvention. So it’ll take some time.”
A poll conducted over the summer by William Hill Vegas found that the UK’s top choice for the next James Bond is Idris Elba, just ahead of Tom Hardy and Henry Cavill.
Broccoli also recently commented: “There’s a big, big road ahead reinventing it for the next chapter and we haven’t even begun with that.”
Recently, the Amazon Prime Video series 007: Road to a Million series launched, which sees contestants take on Bond-inspired challenges around the world for a chance to win a £1million cash prize.
Succession’s Brian Cox hosts the show, and he recently admitted that he thought he had signed up to be the next Bond villain when he agreed to the show.