{"id":904948,"date":"2026-09-25T12:06:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T12:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/904948\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T12:06:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T12:06:18","slug":"james-bond-author-charlie-higson-wants-fleming-faithful-50s-tv-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/904948\/","title":{"rendered":"James Bond author Charlie Higson wants Fleming-faithful &#8217;50s TV series"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>James Bond author Charlie Higson has revealed the small-screen 007 project he&#8217;d like to see \u2013 a faithful adaptation of Ian Fleming&#8217;s original novels, set in their 1950s timeline.<\/p>\n<p>The future of the Bond franchise is currently taking shape under Amazon MGM Studios, with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/movies\/james-bond-denis-villeneuv-director-007-survival-comment\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Denis Villeneuve<\/a> directing the next film, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/movies\/james-bond-steven-knight-fantastic-exclusive-newsupdate\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Steven Knight<\/a> writing the screenplay and the search for Daniel Craig&#8217;s successor now under way.<\/p>\n<p>But beyond Bond&#8217;s return to cinemas, there has inevitably been speculation around whether 007 could eventually expand further on screen \u2013 including into television.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"image__img\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/817F3nWqabL.SL1500-95cc912.jpg\" alt=\"Cover of King Zero which is black with gold dots. There's a couple of gold sharks around.\" data-item-name=\"Cover of King Zero which is black with gold dots. There's a couple of gold sharks around.\" title=\"817F3nWqabL._SL1500_\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1 \/ 1.5495867768595042;object-fit:contain\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"700\" height=\"1084.7107438016528\" data-testid=\"image-img\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Speaking exclusively to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Radio Times<\/a>, Higson said: &#8220;Everybody assumed that&#8217;s what they were going to do, and that&#8217;s why they spent so much money on it and wanted to get it all in-house, because they wanted to do a sort of Bond universe, like the Marvel universe, the Star Wars universe, whatever.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;People have so far been a little bit nonplussed that they haven&#8217;t announced anything else like that, and as far as I know, they haven&#8217;t got any other plans to do it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Higson stressed that he was speculating about Amazon MGM&#8217;s strategy, suggesting its immediate attention is likely to remain on relaunching Bond on the big screen.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I can only assume that they&#8217;re concentrating at the moment on the film,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They&#8217;re waiting to see how that does, how that works, what the response to it is, what the algorithms say about it, and based on that they will then do who knows what to expand it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The prospect of an interconnected &#8216;Bond universe&#8217; is likely to divide 007 fans, Higson acknowledged \u2013 but he believes there are ways of expanding the franchise that could offer something genuinely different from the films.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"image__img\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/james-bond-daniel-craig-39adf6d.jpg\" alt=\"Daniel Craig as James Bond, wearing a smart suit and pointing a gun.\" data-item-name=\"Daniel Craig as James Bond, wearing a smart suit and pointing a gun.\" title=\"Daniel Craig as James Bond in No Time to Die\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1 \/ 0.6666666666666666;object-fit:contain\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"700\" height=\"466.66666666666663\" data-testid=\"image-img\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Daniel Craig as James Bond in No Time to Die.\u00a0MGM<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A lot of people think, &#8216;Oh God, we don&#8217;t really want a Bond universe, a spin-off of absolutely everything,&#8217; but a lot of other people think, well, there are opportunities here to do interesting things.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And rather than a series built around M, Q, Miss Moneypenny or another supporting character, Higson has a very different idea: return to Fleming&#8217;s original books and adapt them for television in period.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;One thing I&#8217;ve always thought might be fun would be to go back and remake the original Fleming novels, but do them set in the original timeline of the &#8217;50s, and try and be fairly faithful to the books, and do that as a TV thing, so that it&#8217;s a very separate thing to the film universe.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Such a project would offer a markedly different approach to Higson&#8217;s own current work with the literary Bond.<\/p>\n<p>His new novel, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/King-Zero-James-Bond-Novel\/dp\/0241799716\/?tag=radtim0b-21&amp;ascsubtag=radiotimes-2495069\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"sponsored nofollow noopener\">King Zero<\/a>, brings 007 firmly into the present day, opening with the murder of a British agent in Saudi Arabia and following Bond as he uncovers a conspiracy stretching far beyond the desert \u2013 with the threat of a global catastrophe looming and a mysterious, immensely powerful new adversary operating in the shadows.<\/p>\n<p>Want to see this content?<\/p>\n<p class=\"consent-placeholder__text mb-0 mt-0\">This page contains content provided by Google reCAPTCHA. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as Google reCAPTCHA may use cookies and other technologies. To view this content, choose &#8216;Accept and continue&#8217; to allow Google reCAPTCHA and its required purposes.<\/p>\n<p>Accept and continue<\/p>\n<p>The novel is Higson&#8217;s first full-length adult Bond adventure, following his Young Bond series and 2023 novella On His Majesty&#8217;s Secret Service, and deliberately imagines how a character created by Fleming in the 1950s operates in the modern world.<\/p>\n<p>Bond has, of course, crossed paths with television before \u2013 the very first screen adaptation of Fleming&#8217;s work was a 1954 CBS version of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/app\/james-bonds-forgotten-first-screen-outing-and-why-its-essential-viewing-for-007-fans\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Casino Royale<\/a>, broadcast as part of anthology series Climax! and starring Barry Nelson as an Americanised version of 007.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, the franchise has made occasional returns to the small screen \u2013 including 1991 animated spin-off James Bond Jr. and, more recently, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/tv\/amazon-prime-video\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Prime Video<\/a> competition series <a href=\"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/tv\/entertainment\/007-road-to-a-million-review\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">007: Road to a Million<\/a>, which launched in 2023 and ran for two seasons.<\/p>\n<p>But a full live-action television drama centred on Bond himself remains largely unexplored territory \u2013 leaving Higson&#8217;s idea of taking 007 back to Fleming&#8217;s original 1950s world an intriguing possibility.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/King-Zero-James-Bond-Novel\/dp\/0241799716\/?tag=radtim0b-21&amp;ascsubtag=radiotimes-2495069\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"sponsored nofollow noopener\">King Zero<\/a> by Charlie Higson is available to buy now.<\/p>\n<p>For all the latest RT Book Club news, interviews, Q&amp;As with the authors, reviews of previous books and more, visit <a href=\"http:\/\/radiotimes.com\/rt-book-club\" data-prosemirror-content-type=\"mark\" data-prosemirror-mark-name=\"link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Radio Times Book Club<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Bond author Charlie Higson has revealed the small-screen 007 project he&#8217;d like to see \u2013 a faithful&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":904949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":["post-904948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904948","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=904948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/904949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}