Bond Chose Denis: Jacob Elordi Shouldn't Hold His Breath
The man who built Dune into a cathedral, who turned Blade Runner 2049 into the most beautiful film nobody saw in cinemas until it was too late — he is choosing the next Bond.
The shortlist exists. That's the part that matters — not the names on it, but the fact that after years of deliberate silence and careful deflection, Amazon and Denis Villeneuve have finally narrowed the field. Jacob Elordi is on it. So is Callum Turner. A handful of others whose agents are currently pretending not to refresh their phones. The next James Bond will be someone on that list, and the conversation has shifted from speculation to selection — which is an entirely different kind of pressure.
Here is what I find genuinely interesting about this moment: Villeneuve is directing. The man who built *Dune* into a cathedral, who turned *Blade Runner 2049* into the most beautiful film nobody saw in cinemas until it was too late — he is choosing the next Bond. That means the next Bond will not be charming in the way Daniel Craig was coiled, or the way Roger Moore was deliberate. Villeneuve's protagonists carry weight. They move through the world like it costs them something. Whoever he picks will need to carry silence as well as a suit, which immediately makes the Elordi conversation more interesting than it first appears. He is tall, he is genuinely strange behind the eyes, and he has been careful about which projects he takes. That carefulness reads on screen.
Callum Turner is the wilder choice and therefore the more compelling one. He has been building toward a leading role that nobody has quite handed him yet, and there is something about that specific hunger — patient, controlled, not yet spent — that makes for a fascinating Bond. Not the finished article. The becoming of one.
Meanwhile, Venice opened its Horizons competition with Anuparna Roy's *Lovers in the Blue Night* already acquired by Parallax for international sales, Thailand sent Apichatpong Weerasethakul's road movie *9 Temples to Heaven* as its Oscar submission, and Sting is narrating a documentary about Nino Rota — the composer who wrote the *Godfather* theme — premiering at Venice. Emma Thompson wrote an entire *Nanny McPhee* musical heading to the West End. The industry, in other words, is not waiting for Bond to be cast before it moves forward.
But the shortlist has a way of making everything else feel like background noise.
Villeneuve doesn't make careless choices. Whoever he picks will either be the best Bond since Connery or the conversation that ends the franchise. There is no middle version of a Villeneuve film.
*The verdict: Callum Turner. I have no evidence. I just know.*
