From Daniel Craig to Tommy Shelby: What will Steven Knight’s ‘James Bond’ look like?
With the recent announcement that Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has landed the gig writing Denis Villeneuve’s much-anticipated James Bond movie, speculation has begun to run rampant about what his vision of the iconic superspy will be.
Namely, are we in for flat caps, Birmingham accents, and a “by order of James Bond” catchphrase?
Obviously, this is funny to imagine, but it is also doing Knight a considerable disservice. After all, before he created the enormously popular historical crime series starring Cillian Murphy, Knight spent more than a decade writing film and television of wildly differing genres. In fact, he’s one of those writers whose filmography is endlessly surprising, with an equal amount of acclaimed brilliance and baffling misfires.
For example, did you know Knight wrote the excellent David Cronenberg gangster film Eastern Promises, which starred Viggo Mortensen in an Oscar-nominated role as a heavily tattooed Russian mobster? Did you know he also wrote and directed the claustrophobic Tom Hardy-in-a-car drama Locke? He also nabbed a ‘Best Original Screenplay’ nomination for 2002’s Dirty Pretty Things, a documentary-style feature about a pair of immigrants living in London.
However, Knight’s film career is also littered with questionable efforts that don’t seem to point to one signature writing style. He penned the woeful Bradley Cooper vehicle Burnt, in which he played a disgraced Michelin star chef, and the interminably boring Brad Pitt/Marion Cotillard World War II romantic drama Allied.
On top of that, his directorial effort, Serenity, became a punchline in 2019 thanks to a truly jaw-dropping twist that didn’t work at all, and he also wrote the forgotten fantasy epic The Seventh Son. Finally, he was the man behind the ill-fated Girl with the Dragon Tattoo sequel/reboot, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, which everybody in the world hated except me. But, then, I have notoriously dodgy taste.
All this is to say, Knight’s screenwriting career is longer and more diverse, for better or worse, than you may think, so thinking that he’ll simply transfer his Tommy Shelby and the Peaky fookin’ Blinders energy to Bond is unlikely. Having said that, there is something about Peaky Blinders and Knight’s other recent historical TV creations that could shed some light on one possible interpretation of Bond.
Casting an eye over Knight’s recent TV empire, which includes Peaky Blinders, SAS: Rogue Heroes, A Thousand Blows, and Taboo, reveals a storytelling style that could lend itself very well to Bond. These shows all fall into a lane I like to call “rip-roaring historical yarns”. Knight makes action-packed, foul-mouthed, rollicking shows that are almost like graphic novels come to life. Some of them feel like old school ‘boys own adventures’ that Knight would have grown up watching in the ’60s, but they’re also shot through with modern storytelling ideas.
Despite often being based on real-life historical figures in specific time periods, Knight cares very little about realism and instead creates a heightened reality that supports all manner of extravagant, entertaining characters. These shows, despite ostensibly being period dramas, don’t feel like period dramas at all. Instead, they feel modern, and that has a lot to do with the rock and punk music Knight uses to soundtrack them. Arctic Monkeys playing while two 1920s gangs have a scrap? Sounds good. Motorhead blasting while soldiers engage in a World War II battle? Why not.
And what about Bond?
So, is it out of the realm of possibility that Knight would craft a period Bond film, perhaps set in the ’60s, with the same riotous energy as his historical shows? By taking that approach, the movie wouldn’t feel old or dated to the audience, but it would allow Knight and Villeneuve to have some fun with the tropes and trappings of that decade. It also may give them a chance to hew closer to Sir Ian Fleming’s novels than most of the other films have.
As for who will fill Bond’s tuxedo in the movie, that – and, indeed, all the casting – is still up in the air. In fact, it’s believed that Amazon and producers Amy Pascal and David Heyman will wait until Knight has completed the script before even thinking about that.
As luck would have it, I recently interviewed the brilliant actor and all-around lovely bloke, Daniel Mays, who co-starred in A Thousand Blows. He told me Knight personally pursued him for the role of bartender William ‘Punch’ Lewis, but at the time, he was busy performing on stage in Guys and Dolls, eight shows per week. Thankfully, they struck a deal to shoot A Thousand Blows during the day, allowing an exhausted Mays to become part of Knight’s universe.
The plot thickened, though, when we quite separately began talking about the new Bond movie. Mays joked about how he could potentially play the new version of Q, Bond’s trusty gadget wizard, most recently portrayed by Ben Whishaw in the Daniel Craig movies.
It was only a few days later, after Knight was announced for Bond, that I put my tinfoil hat on and wondered, “Did he know Knight had already got the job when we spoke?” In essence, could Mays’ jokey reference to playing Q be more based in reality than I knew at the time? Or, have I just disappeared down the rabbit hole by reading far too much into an off-handed comment? Only time will tell.
