According to a recent Page Six report by Tatiana Siegel, we have our finalists to play James Bond in Denis Villeneuve’s crack at 007 with Amazon MGM Studios: Jacob Elordi, Paul Mescal, Callum Turner, Jack Lowden, Harris Dickinson, and… Jack Barton. So who the hell is that?
Barton is a British actor who’s had roles in the film “Poor Things” and on Netflix’s queer young-adult series “Heartstopper,” but Bond would be his first big-screen leading role. Oscar-nominated Nina Gold is handling the search for a new 007, but with Barton, the franchise’s original casting director Debbie McWilliams would get her wish for the new Bond to be a complete unknown.
On this week’s episode of IndieWire’s “Screen Talk” podcast, co-hosts Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio assess the alleged finalists to determine which of them has the stuff to play James Bond. The answer is, mostly, none of them, irrespective of their acting abilities. We feel that “Slow Horses” star Jack Lowden is the best fit, but we’re certainly intrigued by Barton. Elordi, for his part, is probably too tall to play a spy, and Dickinson is more invested in his filmmaking career. Though right now he’s welded to Sam Mendes’ Beatles movies playing John Lennon (in a social-media-controversial wig, by the way).
Elsewhere on the podcast, we also debate whether Mark Ruffalo’s recent comments about the Warnermount merger and Oracle CTO Larry Ellison’s ties to the Israeli defense industry will hurt his career. Paramount labeled his remarks as antisemitism, and for now, they’re successfully distracting press attention from the not-widely-beloved merger.
We also review Ridley Scott’s mixed bag “The Dog Stars,” which stars Elordi, and doesn’t undermine the fact that the “Euphoria” breakout is indeed a movie star who can carry a studio picture. All this and more in this week’s episode.
Listen to the episode below or on your preferred podcast platform.
Leave a Reply