Amazon’s First Bond Tests Leave the Broccoli Chair Empty

Callum Turner, Jack Lowden and Josh O’Connor are among four actors testing in London for James Bond, Amazon MGM’s first 007 pick without the Broccoli family.

The sessions were due to start as early as Friday, October 23, and run through late October. They cover stunts, camera presence and dialogue. Amazon declined to name anyone and pointed back to a May line that the search was underway.

Who Is Testing for James Bond This Weekend?

At least four test offers went out. Insiders say three of the four men expected in front of the camera are Lowden, Turner and O’Connor. The fourth name has not been confirmed. A separate account of the same process put the group as high as five.

The tests were first booked for early October, then pushed so the last group could sit in the same window. That delay is a tell. If one man already had the job, Amazon would not have waited on calendars.

WHAT THE LONDON TESTS COVER

• Stunts: Physical work sits in the same round as the talking, not as an afterthought.
• Camera presence: How a face and a body hold a close-up in a tux is scored on its own.
• Dialogue: The line-reading is the third piece, not the whole audition.

Twenty years ago the last full Bond tests used hair, makeup, sets and a scene from an old film. This round is built as three scored parts in London, with Denis Villeneuve’s film still without a public start date.

THE THREE NAMED FINALISTS

All three are British. All three are 36. That is the shortlist Amazon actually put in a room, after months of talk about a younger Bond.

Amazon Took Creative Control in March 2025

Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson produced every official Bond film the family line touched, from Cubby Broccoli’s run through Craig’s last outing. They decided when a film happened, who played 007, and whether a spinoff lived. Amazon bought MGM in 2022 for $8.5 billion and with it the right to distribute the Bond library, a catalog Amazon puts at more than 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows. Creative control stayed with the siblings until last year.

On February 20, 2025, the three sides said they had formed a joint venture to house the Bond rights. Broccoli and Wilson remain co-owners. Amazon MGM would gain creative control of the James Bond franchise once the deal closed. It closed on March 24, 2025.

A company filing later put the cash for the Broccoli companies’ sale of that remaining interest at $20 million, a different figure from the MGM purchase and not a price for the whole spy. Wilson, then 83, said he was stepping back after nearly 60 years to focus on art and charity, and that it was time for Amazon MGM “to lead James Bond into the future.” Broccoli, then 64, said that with No Time to Die done and Wilson retiring, she would turn to other projects.

She had been blunter in private. In December 2024 she told friends, “These people are fucking idiots,” after a freeze in which there was no script, no story and no new Bond. Amazon had wanted faster films and a wider use of the character. She did not.

HOW AMAZON GOT THE KEYS

1. 2022: Amazon buys MGM for $8.5 billion and takes distribution of the Bond films, not the right to pick the next 007.
2. December 19, 2024: Broccoli’s private verdict on Amazon lands in public, with the next film still stuck.
3. February 20, 2025: The joint venture is announced; Amazon is set to take creative control.
4. March 24, 2025: The deal closes. The Broccoli chair on casting is empty.
5. March 25, 2025: Amy Pascal and David Heyman are named as producers, the first Bond producers outside the family.
6. May 2025: Amazon says the search for the next James Bond is underway and hires casting director Nina Gold.
7. June 25, 2025: Villeneuve is named as director, with Tanya Lapointe as executive producer.
8. October 23, 2026: Final screen tests begin in London.

That is 19 months from close to a tux in a test room. Bond has been off screen for 5 years, since 2021’s No Time to Die, Craig’s last of five films in a 15-year run that started with 2006’s Casino Royale.

The New Producers Already Know Two of the Three

The people in Broccoli’s old seat are not a mystery. Pascal and Heyman produce the studio’s upcoming James Bond film through Pascal Pictures and Heyday Films. Courtenay Valenti, Amazon MGM’s head of film, said the studio was approaching every creative decision with “the greatest sense of responsibility.” Pascal and Heyman said they were humbled to follow Broccoli and Wilson and wanted to keep “the spirit of Bond very much alive.”

Two of the three named testers have already worked in that circle. Pascal produced Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers for Amazon MGM, the tennis film in which O’Connor played Patrick Zweig opposite Zendaya. Heyman produced the Fantastic Beasts films, in which Turner played Theseus Scamander. Lowden’s loudest backer is not a producer. It is Gary Oldman, his Slow Horses co-star.

Nina Gold is running the search. She is the British casting director behind Game of Thrones, The Crown, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Conclave, and she replaces the long Bond tenure of Debbie McWilliams. Gold also worked on The Crown, the show that made O’Connor’s Prince Charles a global part. Steven Knight, the writer of Peaky Blinders, is on the screenplay.

Villeneuve was hired to direct the next James Bond film on June 25, 2025, the first 007 movie under Amazon’s creative control and the 26th official title in a line that began with Sean Connery in 1962’s Dr. No, 64 years back.

Some of my earliest movie-going memories are connected to 007. I grew up watching James Bond films with my father, ever since Dr. No with Sean Connery. I’m a die-hard Bond fan. To me, he’s sacred territory. I intend to honor the tradition and open the path for many new missions to come.

Denis Villeneuve, director, Amazon MGM announcement

In mid-October he gave the job a second, less reverent reason. After three Dune films he said he needed “a very powerful rocket” to pull him off Arrakis, and that Bond was that rocket. Dune: Part Three opens on December 18, 2026. Bond cameras wait on that date, whatever happens in the test room.

How Bond Screen Tests Worked for Casino Royale

Amazon’s round is the first Bond casting in which Broccoli does not sit at the end-of-day table. The last time the part was open, the testing process for Casino Royale ran in two coded waves, Destiny in July 2005 and Alcatraz in September. Casting director Debbie McWilliams had started with younger men for an origin story, then widened the net. Broccoli already wanted Craig.

The tests were full days: hair, makeup, costume, sets, other actors. The scene was Bond meeting Tatiana Romanova in From Russia With Love, a tradition Craig later said he never got Broccoli to explain. Henry Cavill went on September 27. Sam Worthington went on the 28th. Craig went on the 29th, was booked for a whole day, and walked at lunch. “I started the way I meant to go on, being a pain in the arse,” he said later.

Martin Campbell, who directed Casino Royale, described the vote as eight people around a table, producers and the casting director included, hands up until the room was unanimous. Cavill, then 22, gave what Campbell called a tremendous test and lost for looking too young. Matthew Vaughn later said Campbell preferred Cavill’s tape and Broccoli preferred Craig from Layer Cake. Broccoli won. That table is the thing Amazon did not buy in 2022 and did buy in March 2025.

Three British Actors, All 36

Lowden, born June 2, 1990, is the spy who already exists on television. He plays MI5’s River Cartwright on Apple’s Slow Horses, a part that has brought him Emmy and Golden Globe nominations, and he has two BAFTAs and a Laurence Olivier Award on the shelf. He was in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. In December he lands as Mr. Darcy opposite Emma Corrin in Netflix’s Pride and Prejudice. He married Saoirse Ronan in 2024.

He is also the man other actors keep talking about in public. In September, Slow Horses co-star Nick Mohammed said the pair had “been talking about it loads” and that he had heard Amazon wanted someone in his late twenties, not his thirties. Bond continuation writer Charlie Higson said he liked Lowden and did not believe him as a hand-to-hand fighter, the way he believed Craig. Those are the two knocks that have followed Lowden into the room: age, and whether the face that reads as a clever officer also reads as a killer.

Turner, born February 15, 1990, in Hammersmith and raised on a Chelsea estate, is the poster. He went from modeling into Queen and Country and Glue, played Theseus in two Fantastic Beasts films, earned a BAFTA TV nomination for The Capture, rowed through The Boys in the Boat, and led Apple’s Masters of the Air as Bucky Egan. He married Dua Lipa in 2026. In 2018 she said she would love to do the Bond theme. She has not spoken to the present rumour. His last wide film, One Night Only, is the credit enemies of his candidacy keep citing. The test will not score a rom-com. It will score whether the body that already looks like a campaign still moves like a stunt.

O’Connor, also 36, is the actor’s actor in the pile. He won an Emmy and a Golden Globe as Prince Charles on The Crown, played the vicar in Emma, the archaeologist in La Chimera, and the tennis pro in Challengers. In 2025 he appeared with Craig in Wake Up Dead Man, a Knives Out mystery, which means the outgoing Bond has already shared a set with one of the men trying to replace him. He does not have Lowden’s spy series or Turner’s action mini-series. He has the wound, the wit, and a producer who has already seen him carry a studio film.

Lowden already plays a British spy. Turner has the campaign face. O’Connor can play the bruise. Amazon has to decide which of those is 007, or whether the unnamed fourth is a different answer.

Jacob Elordi Is Not in the Room

Jacob Elordi, the Australian actor from Euphoria and Frankenstein, was in the mix in the spring and was still being treated as a live name in the days before the tests. He is not testing. Jack O’Connell, from Sinners, was rumoured early and is not in the final group either. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, James Norton, Paul Mescal and Harris Dickinson had all been linked in earlier rounds. None of them are in the London four that insiders will name.

Henry Cavill is still the ghost in every argument about this job. He tested in 2005, at 22, and lost to Craig for youth. He is not in this room either. The write-in campaign does not have a slot on the call sheet.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The offers: At least four final screen-test offers went out, with Lowden, Turner and O’Connor named as three of them.
• The place and shape: London, from Friday, October 23, through late October, in three parts: stunts, camera presence and dialogue.
• The cuts: Elordi and O’Connell are not testing.
• The bosses: Villeneuve directs, Pascal and Heyman produce, Gold casts, Amazon holds creative control, Broccoli and Wilson remain co-owners.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The fourth name: The other offered tester has not been identified.
• A fifth: One account said up to five men may put on the tux; that number has not been nailed down.
• The decision date: There is no public timetable. People close to the process believe a name comes by the end of 2026.

Amazon’s public line has not moved since May. “The search for the next James Bond is underway,” the studio said. “While we don’t plan to comment on specific details during the casting process, we’re excited to share more news with 007 fans as soon as the time is right.”

The Co-Star Who Called the Race Early

In September, Oldman said the next Bond had already been chosen. “We’re going to find out pretty soon, aren’t we? Because they have picked him,” he said. “They have made their choice, but they have not announced it yet.” In October, Ronan was asked about the same rumour. “Well, Gary Oldman thinks he’s James Bond,” she said. She added that the subject was not coming up at home, that the dog needed walking and dinner needed making.

Oldman may have meant Lowden had made the last group. He may have meant a decision that the studio still will not speak. The schedule fight that shoved the tests from early October to the end of the month sits badly with a coronation. You do not wait on four calendars if one man already has the part.

April chatter had the next Bond younger than the last ones. Mohammed’s late-twenties rumour was the same idea in a different mouth. The men Amazon actually invited to London are 36, 36 and 36, Craig’s age band, not a reboot into a boy. If Broccoli’s fear was that Amazon would treat Bond as a product line, the first visible choice is still a British actor in a tux, in a room, doing stunts and lines. The difference is who gets to raise a hand when the tape ends.

A name can still land before 2026 is out. The film cannot get in front of Villeneuve’s camera until Dune: Part Three has opened on December 18. Between those two dates sits the first Bond Amazon has ever chosen, and the first one Broccoli did not.