Amazon is lining up Harry Potter’s David Heyman and Spider-Man’s Amy Pascal to oversee the James Bond franchise for its studio MGM.
In news first reported by Puck, the two heavyweight producers are said to be the choice of senior Amazon-MGM executives Mike Hopkins, Jen Salke, and Courtenay Valenti and the studio is now negotiating deals with the pair.
Heyman is the British producer who acquired the film rights to JK Rowling’s Harry Potter book series, and produced all eight subsequent film adaptations as well as the three Fantastic Beasts films. Other high-profile credits to his name include the Noah Baumbach-directed Marriage Story and White Noise, Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.
Pascal was chair of Sony’s film division until 2015, where she oversaw Bond films including Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and Skyfall. She was forced to leave in the aftermath of the studio’s infamous email hack after leaked messages suggested she had made racist jokes at the expense of Barack Obama. Since leaving Sony, Pascal has produced the Tom Holland Spider-Man films as well as the animated Spider-Verse spin-offs, and is now working on Gerwig’s Narnia film.
Amazon surprised Hollywood by buying the rights to the Bond franchise in February, paying more than $1bn to secure complete creative control from its long-term producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson. Within hours of news of the deal emerging, Amazon executive chair Jeff Bezos posted a message on social media asking: “Who’d you pick as the next Bond?”
