Rami Malek Is the Perfect Villain for the New Bond Movie
Credit to Author: River Donaghey| Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2019 19:26:01 +0000
It’s been four years since James Bond chased some dude around Mexico City and got a weirdly depressing origin story in Spectre, and now it looks like the guy is coming back to fight a maniacal version of Rami Malek, apparently. Rumors about the 25th Bond movie have been flying over the last few months, but on Thursday morning, the film’s cast and crew finally gave us some concrete details about the upcoming film—and this one sounds seriously goddamn promising.
The as-yet-untitled film (which could—but hopefully won’t—be called Shatterhand) will be Daniel Craig’s final turn as Bond, and will feature Bond alums like Naomie Harris and Ralph Fiennes alongside newcomers like Billy Magnussen, Blade Runner 2049‘s Ana de Armas, and Malek himself as the next Bond villain bent on world domination or whatever.
According to producer Barbara Broccoli, the movie opens with Bond enjoying a quiet life in Jamaica after leaving active service at MI6, but obviously, that doesn’t last long. Bond’s old CIA counterpart Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) shows up and drags him back into another inevitable mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist and save the world or whatever. Sound like literally every other James Bond movie ever made? Of course! But so what! Between Malek and the incredible crew the film has working behind the camera, this one is bound to be tight as hell regardless.
Bond 25 was originally supposed to be directed and co-written by Trainspotting‘s Danny Boyle, but Boyle left the project at the end of last year after reportedly butting heads with producers over the script. The movie seemed to be teetering on the edge of chaos, but thankfully, Cary Joji Fukunaga—director of Beasts of No Nation and last year’s brutally underappreciated Maniac—stepped in to take the reins. The script also reportedly got overhauled by a team of writers, including Killing Eve mastermind Phoebe Waller-Bridge—so if this new Bond winds up feeling anything like Killing Eve and looking anything like Fukunaga’s first season of True Detective, losing Danny Boyle might have actually been a good thing.
Bond 25 is currently in production—reportedly shooting in London, Jamaica, and Norway, because it wouldn’t be a Bond movie without a metric fuckton of locations—and it’s set to hit theaters in 2020. Until then, watch this weird promo video of Rami Malek talking about his new role, and marvel at how it’s taken this long for people to realize that he’d make the perfect supervillain.
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This article originally appeared on VICE US.