{"id":673258,"date":"2026-05-15T20:04:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T20:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/673258\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T20:04:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T20:04:18","slug":"the-new-james-bond-is-officially-being-cast-and-it-could-be-one-of-these-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/673258\/","title":{"rendered":"The new James Bond is officially being cast… and it could be one of these men"},"content":{"rendered":"

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On any culture desk of any newsroom in Britain, the James Bond rumour mill will be a source of great distress. Every month for the past decade, ever since Daniel Craig first signalled at a changing of guards back in 2015<\/a>, a new name is spoken into the ether of who it might be. Of course some reports carry more credence than others and certainly it seems that just about anyone with an IMDb page has had a go as frontrunner \u2013 but the names, they keep on coming. <\/p>\n

Speculation has truly gone into overdrive recently, though, with Craig having hung up his holster a whole five years ago. Surely, we cry, there must be a new 007 on the horizon by now. All this to say, it was a blow to hear that today\u2019s big James Bond announcement<\/a> is not the name of the actor who will be playing him, but rather the name of the casting agent hired to begin the search for him. That\u2019s right \u2013 begin. What feels like a thousand names later, and the search is yet to even begin in earnest. Over the next months, Nina Gold \u2013 one of the most revered casting agents in Britain, whose star-finding abilities helped shape the ensembles of Game of Thrones, The Crown, Slow Horses, Baby Reindeer and the most recent Star Wars trilogy \u2013 will work with producers and director Denis Villeneuve to find their man. <\/p>\n

And so for what feels like the billionth time, here are the latest James Bond frontrunners\u2026<\/p>\n

Callum Turner<\/p>\n

\"CallumCallum Turner in April 2026 (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Only six months ago did Callum Turner feel like a safe bet after reports emerged that the 35-year-old Brit was \u201cblabbing all over town\u201d that he was going to be donning the famed tuxedo. Bolstering these reports were rumours that his pop star fiancee Dua Lipa had snagged the job of recording the equally coveted next Bond theme. As far as rumours go, this one felt legitimate both in timing and nature. As my colleague put it back then<\/a>, \u201cTurner is famous and busy, but not too famous and busy\u201d, meaning that while viewers may recognise him from hit shows and blockbusters such as The Capture and Emma, he\u2019s got the availability required to take on an all-consuming, multi-year franchise. Don\u2019t underestimate the power of having logistics on your side.<\/p>\n

Jacob Elordi<\/p>\n

\"CallumCallum Turner in March 2026 (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The digital ink had barely dried on the thinkpieces around Callum Turner\u2019s casting before it was announced that, actually, the 28-year-old Jacob Elordi was now \u201ca shoo-in\u201d<\/a> after having allegedly met with Villeneuve and the Amazon executives behind the film. Certainly, the Wuthering Heights and Euphoria star \u2013 recently nominated for his first Oscar for Frankenstein \u2013 is tall enough and handsome enough and bankable enough to take on the part. But for the same reason that Turner seems feasible, Elordi doesn\u2019t. Few young, male A-listers would be eager to play the same character for 10 years straight, and Elordi is a man with options. There\u2019s also the Australianness of it all, too. Though advocates of the Brisbane-born star will be quick to point out that he wouldn\u2019t be the first actor from down under to fake the accent, with Aussie George Lazenby having played 007 for just one film: 1969\u2019s On Her Majesty\u2019s Secret Service.<\/p>\n

Harris Dickinson<\/p>\n

\"HarrisHarris Dickinson in October 2024 (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

This is one of those rumours that appeared as quickly as it dissipated \u2013 hooked on a string of Dickinson blockbuster outings like The Triangle of Sadness and Babygirl. That said, the 29-year-old Brit has the acting chops to make this one stick should he want to \u2013 and if he and Gold are indeed heading into an audition room in these coming weeks, there\u2019s a decent chance he\u2019ll come out on top. After all, Dickinson is no stranger to nabbing coveted parts; soon he will play John Lennon in Sam Mendes\u2019s Beatles biopics. It\u2019s also worth noting that despite the heavy-hitting projects on his IMDb page, Dickinson remains alluringly offline \u2013 enough of a blank canvas to disappear into the perfectly tailored tux.<\/p>\n

Jack Lowden<\/p>\n

\"JackJack Lowden in November 2025 (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Admittedly Jack Lowden lacks the star power of his alleged competitors. The 35-year-old Scotsman has flown under the radar for most of his career, which spans films such as Mary Queen of Scots and TV shows like the BBC\u2019s War & Peace. According to Saorise Ronan, though, Lowden would make a superb James Bond \u2013 a belief Ronan holds so strongly that she\u2019d be willing to sacrifice her own hypothetical role in the franchise if it came down to it. Nevermind that Ronan also happens to be his wife\u2026 Still, there are plenty of people who agree with her, after watching Lowden\u2019s turn as the spy River Cartwright in Slow Horses. It\u2019s clear this man has charisma in abundance, and isn\u2019t that the most important quality of all?<\/p>\n

Louis Partridge<\/p>\n

\"LouisLouis Partridge in January 2026 (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

There are plenty of reasons why Louis Partridge probably won\u2019t be James Bond. For one thing, at 23 years old he would be the youngest 007 in history by a mile \u2013 and while, yes, producers are reportedly circling a much younger incoming superspy, 23 seems ludicrous. Do people under the age of 28 even like martinis? But there is some heft to this rumour still, given Partridge\u2019s connection to Steven Knight, who is writing the new Bond script as we speak. Partridge starred in his Netflix series House of Guinness, and given Knight\u2019s propensity to collaborate with the same people (as with Cillian Murphy, for example), perhaps he\u2019s put in a good word for the young up-and-comer. And as for the age thing, maybe producers are thinking about longevity: were Partridge to do six or so Bond films over the next 15-ish years, he would still be under 40 by the time he gave it up. Plus he\u2019d be considerably cheaper than some of the others on this list. Even superspies have budgets and Partridge would be more bang for your buck, as they say. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":["post-673258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}