Casting Couch Energy: James Bond Deserves Better Than a Shortlist
Ed Harris directed, co-wrote, and starred in Appaloosa in 2008 — a Western adaptation so composed and unhurried that it got exactly the reception composed, unhurried things tend to get, which is to say: polite reviews, indifferent box office, eighteen years of being right.
There is a specific kind of institutional anxiety that produces statements like *we'll probably have a shortlist by end of August* — and Amazon MGM is currently living inside it. The James Bond casting announcement, or rather the announcement that an announcement is being prepared, landed with the energy of a press release that knows it has nothing to say but has been told to say something anyway. The casting director's public hope that Jacob Elordi and Callum Turner don't get the role is, depending on your generosity, either refreshing candour or the most spectacular misread of what a casting director is supposed to do publicly. Either way: noted.
Meanwhile, the more interesting story is happening at the quieter end of the news cycle. Ed Harris directed, co-wrote, and starred in *Appaloosa* in 2008 — a Western adaptation so composed and unhurried that it got exactly the reception composed, unhurried things tend to get, which is to say: polite reviews, indifferent box office, eighteen years of being right. It is climbing HBO Max charts now, which means a generation of viewers is discovering what a Western looks like when a serious actor decides to make one seriously. Harris and Viggo Mortensen, two men who understand economy of expression, in the landscape that suits them perfectly. The streaming algorithm has accidentally done something good. This will not happen often. Take note.
Elsewhere: Jesse Eisenberg told Aaron Sorkin he was *moving in different directions* when asked to return as Mark Zuckerberg for *The Social Reckoning*, and Sorkin spent three days trying to change his mind. Three days. This is either the most flattering thing that has ever happened to Jesse Eisenberg or confirmation that Sorkin is constitutionally incapable of accepting that a story has already been told. The original *Social Network* is close to perfect. A sequel is, at best, a very expensive way of proving that.
Netflix has Alicia Vikander joining Aaron Taylor-Johnson in *Enigma Variations*, a modern love series directed by Oliver Hermanus — which is a sentence that contains enough talent to make you cautiously optimistic and enough Netflix involvement to make you cautiously not. Hermanus directed *Living* with a precision that was almost ruthless. The question is whether a streaming series gives him room to work at that register, or whether the format irons everything flat.
The Bond machine will eventually produce a name. It always does. The real question is whether anyone making that decision has recently watched *Appaloosa* and understood what they're actually looking for.
