During a TV interview focused on Wednesday’s news about new AI features being added to Amazon‘s Alexa voice assistant, CEO Andy Jassy was asked about the topic du jour in Hollywood: James Bond.
“We don’t have a plan yet on what the next theme is going to be,” he told CNBC, according to a transcript furnished by the network. “We haven’t – nobody’s written the story yet. But we will take great care. It’s an amazing franchise that we care a lot about and that we expect to develop over a long period of time.”
The exec’s comments follow last Friday’s stunning deal between Amazon and longtime Bond stewards Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. The pact gives Amazon, which has already held distribution rights to the franchise after its 2022 acquisition of MGM, full creative control of the property. There have been lamentations about the end of an era and anxiety in the fan and creative communities about the risk of over-exploitation of the British super-spy.
Asked to address nervousness about the future of the franchise, Jassy led with a quip about AI that wouldn’t have played well in 2023 and still might not today in some Hollywood circles. “First of all,” he said, “I don’t believe that AI is going to write a Bond movie any time soon.” He went on to say that Amazon execs are “incredibly honored to have the ability to help shepherd the Bond franchise for the next generation. And we have amazing filmmakers that we have hired over time at MGM Amazon Studios.”
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To be fair, the Bond question surfaced in the middle of a conversation almost completely centered around AI, which is a major business objective for Amazon and other large tech players. “I do want to talk some more about that and AI,” CNBC anchor Jon Fortt said, “but first I want to touch on some other things, and actually first something that AI doesn’t yet do so well, which is craft high-end entertainment.” He then led into Bond, with the framing prompting the screenwriting quip from the CEO.
There has not been a new Bond film since the fall 2021 release of No Time to Die. The lull coincides with the death of Bond in that installment, but one aspect of the longtime structure of the Wilson-Broccoli arrangement has been their conservative approach to the franchise. They at one point nixed the idea of a spinoff starring Halle Berry and expressed clear direction that Bond remain a theatrical proposition without being manifest as a series or in other forms in the manner of Marvel.
Jassy, a longtime Amazon exec who cut his teeth running the company’s revenue-producing web services division, took the helm as CEO in 2021 when Jeff Bezos segued to executive chair of the company.