He would be the “blunt instrument” of the novels, just getting his license to kill and all too eager to use it.ĭaniel Craig won the role handily despite a raft of contenders throwing their hats in the ring, and immediately set out to create a 007 who was perhaps even closer to the brooding, haunted, terse figure of the books than anyone who had come before him. So they rebooted, and the decision was made that the next movie, the long-awaited (and long held up by rights issues) adaptation of Ian Fleming’s very first Bond novel, Casino Royale, would feature a younger, more hard-edged Bond. “Cubby” Broccoli-decided that the breezier Moore-with-a-dash-of-Connery escapades that Brosnan headlined had gone as far as they could go. Wilson, heirs to late 007 uber-producer Albert R. With all this in mind, Eon Productions-now run by Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. But even though his four films were hit-and-miss, Brosnan had fulfilled his duty by bringing Bond into a post-Cold War era where new enemies lurked and the idea of a secret agent was up for debate. The Pierce Brosnan era of the James Bond franchise, which started so promisingly with the tough, character-driven GoldenEye (1995), had become more smug, more flippant, and more reliant on visual effects by the time it got to 2002’s Die Another Day with its invisible car and ice palace.