{"id":328836,"date":"2026-03-04T18:20:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T18:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/328836\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T18:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T18:20:10","slug":"will-the-next-james-bond-villain-be-one-of-these-four-actors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/328836\/","title":{"rendered":"Will the Next James Bond Villain Be One of These Four Actors?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Theories about which actor will take over the role of James Bond have proliferated from the moment Daniel Craig<\/a> hung up the Omega and the Walther with 2021\u2019s No Time to Die. (Technically, the speculation\u2019s been going on even longer\u2014at least since the early 2010s, when it seemed like Craig might step down sooner than he ultimately did.)<\/p>\n

Today we have at least a little bit of information regarding what to expect from the next Bond flick\u2014Denis Villeneuve in the director\u2019s chair<\/a>, a 2028 release date. Other than that, there\u2019s very little out there in terms of concrete intel. Jacob Elordi<\/a> is the latest rumored front-runner for the role of 007, joining a long list that includes Callum Turner<\/a> and Aaron Taylor-Johnson<\/a>\u2014but at this point, the only rumor we\u2019re inclined to believe is the one from late February that says a new Bond has not been chosen because the script for Bond 26 isn\u2019t done<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The speculation will nonetheless continue, so instead of begging for it to stop, I\u2019m going to simply ask, as a James Bond<\/a> die-hard, that we reframe the conversation. The Bond films aren\u2019t just about the man in the suit, after all. They\u2019re about exotic locales, great menswear<\/a>, and incredible cars<\/a>. They\u2019re also about incredible co-stars. The best Bond movies live and die by their villains. The good ones rarely have lousy villains, and vice versa (all love and respect to Christopher Lee\u2019s Scaramanga, the rare exception to this rule.) So instead of fixating on who the next James Bond will be, let\u2019s talk about who might play the person trying to kill him.<\/p>\n

A few ground rules: The last few James Bond films pitted Craig\u2019s Bond against a series of bigger and bigger names, from Javier Bardem to Oscar winner Rami Malek<\/a>. This makes sense from a business standpoint but not from a James Bond standpoint; even as someone who halfheartedly defends 2015\u2019s fairly disastrous Spectre (the first hour is good!), Christoph Waltz\u2019s Blofeld was so on-the-nose in that film it ultimately deflated the first appearance of Bond\u2019s historic arch nemesis in a Craig Bond film. Ironically, Andrew Scott\u2013who plays a secondary surprise villain in the film\u2013occupied the exact sweet spot of someone who could and should have played a first-billing villain at the time in the wake of his turn on BBC\u2019s Sherlock.<\/p>\n

So while Villeneuve may ultimately decide to cast an established star as the next Bond villain, I\u2019m not going to suggest that Colman Domingo, Cillian Murphy, or Jeremy Strong step up to face whoever the Tom Ford suit turns out to fit. Ideally, you want an actor who’s garnered some acclaim in an awards-season film or two\u2014maybe even an international hit\u2014but hasn’t yet become a universally familiar face. The four actors below all have the combination of intangibles that would make for an unforgettable Bond antagonist.<\/p>\n

Wagner Moura<\/p>\n

\"Wagner<\/p>\n

David Lee\/Courtesy of Amazon Studios<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Theories about which actor will take over the role of James Bond have proliferated from the moment Daniel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[269,93,61,60,18747,270,11514,514],"class_list":["post-328836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-culture","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-james-bond","tag-movies","tag-textbelowcenterfullbleed","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}