Daniel Craig has taken a major U-turn on his apparent refusal to return to the James Bond franchise as 007, telling an audience in New York that he would ‘miss it terribly.’
While promoting Spectre last year, Daniel memorably claimed that he would ‘rather slash [his] wrists’ than make another Bond movie. When speaking at the New Yorker Festival’s Beyond Bond panel over the weekend, though, he appeared to have had a change of heart – and dropped the first major hint that he would soon be back in Bond’s tuxedo.
‘I’ve got the best job in the world doing Bond. The things I get to do on a Bond movie and the type of work it is, there’s no other job like it,’ he told the audience in Manhattan. ‘If I were to stop doing it, I would miss it terribly. I love this job. I get a massive kick out of it and if I can keep getting a kick out of it, I will.’
Referring to his infamous wrist-slitting comments, he added: ‘They say that sh*t sticks and that definitely stuck. It was the day after filming. I’d been away from home for a year.’
These comments follow the assertion from Bond’s executive producer Callum McDougall that the 48-year-old actor is still ‘absolutely the first choice’ to play 007. McDougall, who has worked on nine Bond films (including all four helmed by Daniel), also said that he ‘knows they [the producers] are hoping for him to come back.’
Ever since Craig implied that his time as Bond was over, the rumour mill has gone into overdrive to identify potential replacements. Tom Hiddleston, Idris Elba and Poldark’s Aidan Turner have all been touted as favourites, while names like James Norton, Michael Fassbender and Jamie Bell have also been thrown into the mix.
Craig, meanwhile, has been filming Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky (which explains the distinctly un-Bond peroxide buzz cut he is currently sporting) and it set to star in a TV adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s Purity.
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