Which means the creative control of Amazon MGM about the James Bond film franchise for the future of 007

James Bond was in the middle at the Academy Awards 2025 and in a somewhat strange way.

In a musical number, Lisa von Blackpink, Doja Cat and Raye sang the BondtiTiTeieders “Live and Let Die”, “Diamonds Are Forever” or “Skyfall”. No Bond films were nominated for an award, and none of these singers have a connection to the Bond franchise, although they recently worked together on the single “Born Again”.

The strange exercise felt less like a celebration and more like a big question mark for a screen for a screen symbol, the future of which has never felt more insecure.

Since the shocking news has dropped on February 20, 2025, Jeff Bezos’ Amazon MGM Studios take over creative control over the James Bond film franchise, commentators and fans asked why.

Why should the Brokkoli family, who have long held the rights of films by their company Eon and the control of the film series to a Tech partner with whom they came into contradiction to the film series?

Two options have arisen.

First, Eons Stiefson and daughter of the legendary Eon producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli reached a point of creative exhaustion. This theory could give something. According to Matthew Belloni from Puck, the 83-year-old Wilson and the 64-year-old Brokkoli had difficulty finding her next step after 2021 than “no time to die”.

A second reason could be the impatience of Amazon near Eon. In December 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported that Barbara Broccoli, Jennifer Salke, Executive from Amazon Studios, made several Bond spinoff projects, including a Bond series with a female leadership, for Prime Video. Perhaps frustrated with the patient situation, Amazon Wilson and Brokkoli may have made an offer that they could not reject to clear them out of the way and roll them out of the production of bond content.

Speculation is certainly fascinating. But a more central question should not be overlooked: the “what”.

What exactly did Amazon MGM acquire? And what can it actually do with the Bond story?

Remove the rights of bonds

In my research on the 007 franchise, I found that this property has never been a traditional film series.

Long before “Star Wars” started in 1976 and which was launched in 2008, Bond relied on a number of media to tell his history.

The Bond franchise did not start with a film in 1953, but with a novel Ian Fleming’s “Casino Royale”. A year later, “Casino Royale” was adapted as a live anthology show for American television. Four years later, in 1958, a popular Bond comic made his debut.

It was only in 1962 with “Dr. No, ”with Sean Connery that the now Iikonic film series began.

Since then, James Bond has been into an animated show by Children’s, choose books that you with an adventure, a “Young Bond” sromy, video games, a reality show, radio dramas and more.

Here is what is crucial: With his new deal, Amazon MGM only has a controlling share in the rights that Eon has. Eon has had the right to produce future films and television programs from Fleming since 1961. Eon secured global merchandising rights and production rights for video games in the early 1990s in 1964.

Other 007 media – the literary, comic and audio series – are managed by the publications of Fleming Estate and Ian Fleming.

I call the James Bond Media franchise a common right and license network.

No company controls all bond rights, and nobody produces all bond media. Although this agreement is complicated, the parts and licensing of rights have made bond it possible as a lucrative and fertile product line. According to my calculations, it now has 330 original stories in 72 years of media production.

In other words, Bond is much more than the 25 films published by Eon.

James Bonds many live

So far, the right sharing and licensing have ensured that the Bond franchise differentiates between “Star Wars” and Marvel.

The companies that produce these series – Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios – belong to Walt Disney Company. With their rights under a corporate unit, which also monitors the entire production, “Star Wars” and Marvel were able to prepare under their stories to a high degree of creative consistency and unity. About films, TV, comics and video games strive for “Star Wars” and Marvel after what media specialists call “Transmedia storytelling”.

By sharing rights, the Bond franchise is a completely different kind of storytelling that broke the story and multiplied the James Bonds in order to be experienced in various media. The effect is not transmedia storytelling or even a multiverse in Marvel style. In Bond, characters cannot switch to alternative realities and make other versions of themselves.

James Bond exists in many different worlds and leads many different lives.

To name just a few: there is the binding of Fleming’s novels of the 1950s and 1960s, which loses his first love, Vesper Lynd, and hunts her murderers, the members of Smerh, the attack of the Soviet secret services. Flemings Bond continues to live in the novels by Kingsley Amis and John Gardner, who were released in the 1970s and 1980s.

There is Eons Silver Screen Bond, who never fell in love with Vesper from 1962 to 2002, but his wife Tracy di Vicenzo loses the crime syndicate and is drawn after the loss. And in modern times there is the bond that appears in the author Samantha Weinberg’s “Moneypenny Diaries”. The series was released from 2005 to 2008 and shows a version of Bond, which has withdrawn into a small Scottish island with its beloved, Miss MONYPNY from MI6.

The effect of the common structure of Bond is what I commissioned “Thread Storytelling”. The novels present different versions of Bonds live in different places in history. The film series creates two of its own. The comic series offers even more life from 007.

Every version of Bond runs on the market next to the others and focuses on a bond character that only exists in its unique history of history. This gives the fans an unpredictable, constantly growing canon of stories that they can pursue and even compare, such as a Grand Spot-Different game in good time.

Where next to Bond?

The deal between Amazon MGM and Eon is waiting in the United States and Great Britain

When it goes through, Amazon MGM has a strong property in its hands. Over the decades, Eon has intensified certain elements for the character and history: James Bond is a debonair -hitman. Mi6 Chief M gives him high missions. MI6 Armorer Q fits him with the latest devices. And Bond lives tall, enjoys beautiful women, fine food, Savile Row Mode and Omega watches.

It is unlikely that Amazon MGM will make this Bondian elements. You will probably also keep the “bond formula” of the films visual of the Gun-Fass, which starts every film, elaborately designed loan sequences, film-specific title songs and the closing title card with the inscription “James Bond Return”.

Nevertheless, some fans fear that Amazon MGM will develop “Woke” pathways. Others stipulate that the product is diluted with countless streaming spinoff series.

For me, the more fascinating way is whether Amazon will try to create a more uniform bond universe that resembles the Marvel Cinematic universe. Yes, the fleming estate will continue to manage the novels, comics and radio. But with creative control over Eon’s rights, Amazon MGM could theoretically develop an elaborate Transmedia strategy that has never been researched in this franchise.

A relaunched film series that may serve as an “mother ship” by Amazon MGM would fit in video games and streaming shows in satellite series. These games and shows would connect and expand the universe of the films.

If this had happened, the Bond franchise would really enter into a new phase and take the risk of losing a large part of creative flexibility that it has observed in the past.