Is the Amazon version of James Bond doomed?

So at last the deadlock has been broken. After months, even years, of tension between Amazon MGM, who own the rights to the studio that made the James Bond films, and Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, the producers and de facto custodians of the franchise, it has been announced that Broccoli and Wilson have, somewhat unexpectedly, ceded complete creative control to the Bond character and the 007 series to Amazon.

Presumably they did so in exchange for an amount of money that might make even Ernst Stavro Blofeld go weak at the knees. This now will not only accelerate development of a new Bond film, but also gives Amazon what it has wanted for years: the ability to exploit the intellectual property opportunities of one of the best-loved characters in contemporary entertainment.

Whatever you think about Broccoli and Wilson — who in many regards hold the same dominion over Bond that Kevin Feige does at Marvel — they’ve been unafraid to experiment, moving in a far grittier direction with the Daniel Craig movies and hiring Oscar-winning actors to serve as baddies and, in the case of Skyfall and Spectre’s director Sam Mendes, a bona fide Oscar-winning director.

It has been rumored that the reason why there is no Bond film hitting our screens any time soon is because Broccoli, in particular, was deeply hostile to the idea of Amazon’s ownership of the character; the Wall Street Journal quoted her as referring to the company as “fucking idiots,” and there was notably no pushback from the reporting of the comment.

Still, now that Amazon are in complete control, it will be fascinating to see what comes next. On the plus side, the door is open for a major auteur director like Christopher Nolan or Quentin Tarantino — both of whom have repeatedly, publicly expressed interest in making a Bond film — to step up and make their mark on the franchise, presumably with the full creative control that they would never have been allowed in the Broccoli-Wilson era. Yet on the other hand, the 007 films have never been a director’s medium; Mendes’s work on Skyfall is probably as idiosyncratic as the series has ever allowed for, and even that was largely through Roger Deakins’s unforgettable cinematography.

No, it’s a lot more likely that the reason why Amazon have paid a supervillain’s bounty is because they want to do the same to Bond that Disney have so inexpertly done with Star Wars and Marvel and create countless spin-off franchises that they can then put on Prime. If you ever wanted to see origin stories for everyone from Blofeld and M to Moneypenny and Felix Leiter, well, you’re in luck; no doubt there will be a rush of them over the coming years. And just as the Disney exploitation of previously beloved characters has led to a dearth of creative imagination, so we can expect this particular return to the well to run out of juice very, very quickly.

The reason why James Bond has endured for over sixty years is not because of the terrible quips, the martini recipes or the ridiculously named villains or love interests. It is because, ever since its creator Ian Fleming’s death, there has always been someone making sure that the franchise does not descend into bathos. Sometimes, it has anyway — I defy anyone to watch Die Another Day or Quantum of Solace and suggest that the creative process has been firing on all cylinders — but, at their best, the Bond movies are some of the most reliable mainstream entertainment to be found in cinemas anywhere.

But now, with the long-standing producers apparently throwing in the towel (they will, admittedly, continue to co-own the franchise), the sound that you hear is a thousand Amazon executives rubbing their hands together in glee. And that, frankly, is more frightening than any nefarious hook-handed villain’s world-conquering plan.