It’s been close to five years since a new James Bond film landed on the big screen: No Time to Die, Daniel Craig’s swan song as the spy, hit theaters in the fall of 2021. Now under the stewardship of online retailer Amazon (save your Jeff Bezos as Bond villain quips, they’ve all been made), the franchise is preparing a return, VF’s Chris Murphy reports. But who is casting director Nina Gold considering for the title role? That question is the foundation of an oddsmakers’ cottage industry, Murphy discovered—and the top bets range from far-fetched to boringly plausible.
After years of speculation and an unending well of rumors, casting director Nina Gold has finally begun testing candidates to replace Daniel Craig as the next 007. Here’s who oddsmakers think might make the cut.
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The following breeze was suddenly retarded and he dropped forty feet, tail down. He was only forty feet from the ground, falling straight, when he got back to even keel and shot ahead. How safe the nest of the nacelle where he sat seemed then! Almost gaily he swung her in a great wavering circle—and the wind was again in his face, hating him, pounding him, trying to get under the wings and turn the machine turtle. Twice more he worked his way about the track. The conscience of the beginner made him perform a diffident Dutch roll before the grand stand, but he was growling, "And that's all they're going to get. See?" As he soared to earth he looked at the crowd for the first time. His vision was so blurred with oil and wind-soreness that he saw the people only as a mass and he fancied that the stretch of slouch-hats and derbies was a field of mushrooms swaying and tilted back. He was curiously unconscious of the presence of women; he felt all the spectators as men who had bawled for his death and whom he wanted to hammer as he had hammered the wind. He was almost down. He cut off his motor, glided horizontally three feet above the ground, and landed, while the cheers cloaked even the honking of the parked automobiles. Carl's manager, fatly galloping up, shrilled, "How was it, old man?" "Oh, it was pretty windy," said Carl, crawling down and rubbing the kinks out of his arms. "But I think the wind 's going down. Tell the announcer to tell our dear neighbors that I'll fly again at five." "But weren't you scared when she dropped? You went down so far that the fence plumb hid you. Couldn't see you at all. Ugh! Sure thought the wind had you. Weren't you scared then? You don't look it."[186] "Then? Oh! Then. Oh yes, sure, I guess I was scared, all right!... Say, we got that seat padded so she's darn comfortable now." The crowd was collecting. Carl's manager chuckled to the president of the fair association, "Well, that was some flight, eh?" "Oh, he went down the opposite side of the track pretty fast, but why the dickens was he so slow going up my side? My eyes ain't so good now that it does me any good if a fellow speeds up when he's a thousand miles away. And where's all these tricks in the air——" "That," murmured Carl to his manager, "is the i-den-ti-cal man that stole the blind cripple's crutch to make himself a toothpick."
