With Danny Boyle hitting the ejector button from the job of directing Bond 25 last month, MGM and the Eon team have been facing the issue of who will replace him. Yann Demange, SJ Clarkson and Bart Layton are on the list.
Demange, of course, has popped up on the companies' wish list in the past, back before Boyle was locked in. He was in serious contention but according to Variety, he didn't have a finished cut of his latest, White Boy Rick to show. That's no longer the case, and of course he has a slight advantage having already met with the producers.
Clarkson, meanwhile, is attached to make the next Star Trek film, still in development at Paramount. And Layton, who appeared as a guest on last week's Empire Podcast in support of his latest, American Animals, has yet to lock in his next job. Neither of them are directors you would naturally think of as Bond filmmakers, but that might be the point. Clarkson in particular would be an interesting, different choice, and the first woman to make a Bond movie.
The clock is ticking for the producers, who are faced with the idea of moving the release date if the film isn't in production by a certain point. It's all just talk at this point, as Clarkson and Layton have yet to meet with the team, and other choices will no doubt be added to the list. Yet it's fun to speculate on what each one could bring to the long-running spy series, at least within the carefully-controlled borders of the Bond films.
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