According to an unverified report from The Daily Mail, Daniel Craig may be getting some competition at MI6 in the upcoming Bond 25. Now, before we get into this, it’s worth reiterating that this is an unverified report from a “movie insider,” and The Daily Mail isn’t exactly the most unimpeachable news outlet, so it is just a rumor. It could be true, it could be as far from the the truth as one could possibly get, or it could be somewhere in between. All we know is that people are talking about it on the internet, so we might as well join them. Got that? Alright.
So, according to this “movie insider,” Bond 25 opens with Daniel Craig’s Bond chilling on a beach in Jamaica. Back in England, Ralph Fiennes’ M has uncovered yet another big spy emergency, prompting him to call in his top agent, 007. However, it’s not Craig’s Bond that comes through the door, but a new character played by Lashana Lynch—best known for playing Maria Rambeau in Captain Marvel. In other words, James Bond is no longer 007. He’s been replaced.
The “movie insider” refers to it as a “popcorn-dropping moment,” saying that “Bond, of course, is sexually attracted to the new female 007 and tries his usual seduction tricks, but is baffled when they don’t work.” Lynch’s 007 “basically rolls her eyes at him and has no interest in jumping into his bed”—or at least “not at the beginning.” Meanwhile, that’s not the only change supposedly happening on the set of director Cary Fukunaga’s Bond 25:
The source added that the phrase ‘Bond girls’ is now forbidden, saying: ‘We were all told that from now on they are to be addressed as ‘Bond women’.’
The wheel of progress moves slowly, sometimes so slowly that it’s unclear if it really moved at all, but even by the strictest definition of the word “progress” that has to count as… something. Again, though, we must point out that this is all coming from an unverified report to The Daily Mail, so we wouldn’t blame you for a second if you think it’s all fake.