The search for the next James Bond has been pretty quiet since Daniel Craig wrapped up his tenure with 2021's No Time to Die, but it sounds like things are heating up. The AV Club cites a handful of sources (The Sun, Puck News, The Mail On Sunday) in an article claiming that Aaron Taylor-Johnson has emerged as the frontrunner to take over as the new 007.
You may remember him as the title character in Kick-Ass, or as Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron, or maybe from last summer's Bullet Train. The story picking up steam says that Taylor-Johnson has met with longtime Bond producer Barbara Broccoli and that the meeting went really well. The first rumblings of this seem to have started in November, when The Sun reported that the actor had impressed producers in a "secret audition." Eon Productions is said to be aiming for a reinvention of the iconic super-spy, but the article notes that Aaron Taylor-Johnson meets the classic new 007 requirements...he's male, he's British, and he's in his thirties. This is far from a lock, but the only other candidate mentioned in the piece is Emily in Paris actor Lucien Laviscount.
Taylor-Johnson definitely has action chops. He beefed up and underwent tactical training to play a special ops commander in Christopher Nolan's TENET and recently took on tons of stunt work and fight choreography for his role as an assassin in Bullet Train. Check out the clip below of one of his Bullet Train fight scenes with Brad Pitt, but look out for some pretty salty language.
Up next for Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a starring role in the Sony Spider-Man spinoff Kraven The Hunter and co-starring with Ryan Gosling in a movie version of The Fall Guy. Time will tell if he gets to slip on the tux as our new 007 after that.
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