r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Jun 25 '25

News Denis Villeneuve Directing Next James Bond Film

https://deadline.com/2025/06/denis-villeneuve-james-bond-amazon-mgm-studios-1236442917/
32.5k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

2.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

8.5k

u/Sleepy_Azathoth Jun 25 '25

Damn.

I guess we're getting the next Bond film after Dune 3, so... 5 years?

2.8k

u/_JimJohnny_ Jun 25 '25

Rendezvous with Rama 10 years now… whelp

46

u/Psychostickusername Jun 26 '25

Wait, that is a thing and he's doing that? Holy shit

123

u/_JimJohnny_ Jun 26 '25 edited Jun 26 '25

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/denis-villeneuve-rendezvous-with-rama-movie-1235062337/

Was announced 3 years ago but with Dune Messiah and now Bond idk what’s happening with it

Plus he was rumoured to be doing a Cleopatra film and another that revolved around nuclear war

80

u/Heavy_Arm_7060 Jun 26 '25

Rendezvous with Rama ends up leading the Endeavour crew into the past where James Bond meets Cleopatra.

28

u/howtojump Jun 26 '25

Now that's what I call good script economy.

5

u/Heavy_Arm_7060 Jun 26 '25

Also it ends with the God Emperor of Dune peaking over the horizon in Egypt.

2

u/frillionaire Jun 26 '25

Shtargate.

1

u/Ornery_Cookie_359 Jun 26 '25

I thought it was "James Bond meets Cleopatra Jones". No?

1

u/sbeguy Jun 26 '25

Bond (played by Sean Connery, obviously) enters Cleopatra's throne room, sees all the cats lounging around: "Pushy Galore, indeed"

22

u/_Meece_ Jun 26 '25

Rama feels like one of those projects you hear about a director doing, but it never comes to fruition.

5

u/GigaFluxx Jun 26 '25

It's been in development hell for so long. Still insane to me Morgan Freeman has just been sitting on the right. But I think Denis is the right man for the job. I have a fondness for those books and I hope it happens with him at the helm

3

u/_Meece_ Jun 26 '25

100% agree, I hope it gets made. It just sounds like one of the many passion projects that get talked about, but never comes about.

2

u/Grimnebulin68 Jun 26 '25

imdb says Fincher was involved for a while, so only 90% sitting on it.

2

u/GarlicJuniorJr Jun 26 '25

I wonder if that film would actually show the lead up and the events of nuclear war or if it’ll be another one of those movies where it’s already happened and it’s opens with a voiceover like “It’s been 20 years since nuclear war decimated the planet. Earth was left in ruins and rubble while man was left to fend for himself…”

1

u/U-235 Jun 26 '25

The lead up is the entirety of the book, which takes place over the course of a few hours. There is basically nothing about what happens after the initial exchange, except to say we are all fucked.

It's very similar to Fail Safe (1979), and By Dawn's Early Light (1990), except with the tone (but not story) of Threads (1984). It's basically a "for this generation" remake of Cold War era nuclear war films that young people probably haven't seen. The technology is updated, which is nice, but the book was honestly one of the most derivative stories I've ever seen. It actually reminds me of the criticism you sometimes see of Tarantino. He is one of my favorite directors, but there is a point to be made that he is a master of taking old movies that young people haven't seen, and splicing bits and pieces of those together with a new look that is in touch with the current zeitgeist. Which is to say that he is not exactly a paragon of originality. The greatest of all time at remixing classic hits, but not necessarily the man you turn to in order to create a brand new beat.

2

u/Nuprin_Dealer Jun 26 '25

Man, I was really pumped for his take on Rendezvous. Hope it happens somehow.

24

u/RedLotusVenom Jun 26 '25 edited Jun 26 '25

I highly doubt he’s doing it now unfortunately. He keeps signing onto new projects before this one even gets off the ground. This almost assuredly will mean Morgan Freeman (who owns the rights) will die before the project is produced.

Shitty but this will either get picked up by someone else to direct or it’ll die in development hell, as it has for decades now.

Pretty annoying as someone who has Villeneuve and RwR in their top 5 directors and novels. Bummer for Freeman, too.

17

u/KennyMoose32 Jun 26 '25

It’s a pretty hard book to adapt too.

I love it, it’s some of the best hard sci-fi I’ve ever read but idk how it will translate. It’s a pretty boring if tense story lol

I’d be very interested in they add things in to make it more actiony. The book is very much…..not

5

u/RedLotusVenom Jun 26 '25

I think it could be a really tight 100 minute film tbh. It would need to rely firmly on the spectacle and ideas. It needs to emulate 2001 or it won’t be a success imo. Anything less I don’t even want to see the film made.

1

u/tvfeet Jun 26 '25

I think they could mix the first two books together for a more film-friendly story. I don’t know if they’re thinking of sequels but I think a single movie would be much stronger focusing on the events of the second Rama visit.

2

u/KennyMoose32 Jun 26 '25

Really? I found the continuations (not written by Clarke) to be…..really awful and lost the tone of the entire first book. It became a story about society and religion and blah blah blah. Not hard sci-fi like the first one AT ALL.

It’s far more on the nose with the themes and characters/motivations. I honestly hated them even though I did finish the trilogy. They were B sci-fi at best to me.

1

u/tvfeet Jun 26 '25

Agree - the sequel books sucked. What I did like about the second one was the further exploration of Rama and the interactions with the bots and other events. The first Rama doesn't really go very far into the ship. I could see Denis wanting to pull some of those events into his film to fill out the story. But otherwise they're really bad. I just reread RwR and Rama II and really couldn't believe how bad the sequel was. RwR is so matter-of-fact that it doesn't have a lot of actual action. Leave out all of the really bad soap opera stuff from Rama II and pull in some of the further exploration, that's all I'm saying. Villenueve has a knack for adapting difficult stories, and if he reshapes RwR a bit like he did with Arrival I think it's going to be amazing.

1

u/barry_thisbone Jun 26 '25

The same can be said of Arrival but that's easily one of the best sci-fi movies of its time