May 14, 2026: Amazon MGM posted the line. The search is underway. No details during the process. Nina Gold closed the casting deal the same week.

Gold is the name you hire when the list has to survive the internet. Game of Thrones. The Crown. The Force Awakens. Paddington. Conclave. She works with Denis Villeneuve and producers Amy Pascal and David Heyman. Steven Knight is on the script.

Daniel Craig is finished. The Broccoli family sold control into the Amazon era. The new Bond is the first one that studio will own from the first table read. That is why a “global hunt” headline writes itself. The job is still a British civil servant with a licence. The search is not required to stay inside one postcode.

General meetings ran through 2025 after Pascal and Heyman signed on. Gold’s early sessions, per Deadline, were the lesser-known names — see if anyone belongs on the call sheet with the obvious ones. By June, Villeneuve was phoning actors himself. August tests. Sources argued over five-to-seven versus the teens.

Names that fit the brief in the trades: Harris Dickinson, Callum Turner, Jacob Elordi. Jack Lowden lives in the rumor mill because Gold also cast Slow Horses. None of them have a contract the studio will confirm. Pascal floated an announcement window by the end of 2026. Knight, asked later, did not deny that someone might already know.

The photo is Gold in the star shirt, map on the wall, roses, scripts, pineapple lamp. Casting-office chic. The caption asks the audience to vote. The audience always votes. Connery through Craig, every cycle produces a fan shortlist that dies on the first official still.

Bond 26 does not have a face in this graphic because it does not have a face yet. It has a caster, a director, a studio statement, and a summer of rooms. Who do you think will be the next Bond is the only question the campaign is allowed to ask in public. The answer is still in Gold’s book.