The first new James Bond under the complete ownership of Amazon MGM Studios will make his debut in 2026, and he is young, brash, has a robust origin story and a mysterious scar on his right cheek … and is a playable character.
The future of the James Bond film franchise is still being written (Amy Pascal and David Heyman are hard at work on that), but the next chapter of James Bond the IP will begin next year, in what will be the first project to feature the iconic character since Amazon stunned the world by buying out control from Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson.
In 2026, the Danish video game publisher IO Interactive will release 007 First Light, a new video game franchise starring a wholly original version of Bond. It’s a big deal, not just because it is the first new Bond to be released under Amazon, and the first new version of the James Bond character since Daniel Craig starred in Casino Royale in 2006, but it will also be the first major James Bond game to be released in 15 years, since 2010’s 007: Blood Stone (which featured a digital likeness of Craig as Bond).
And it is being developed by IO, the publisher behind the Hitman franchise, one of the biggest pieces of video game IP in history.
Hakan Abrak, the CEO of IO Interactive, tells The Hollywood Reporter in an interview that the there is “a lot of pressure” to deliver, given both his studio’s track record, and the legacy of James Bond the character.
“Bond is a very cherished and important IP, and a lot of people have grown up with that,” he says. “It does mean a lot to a lot of people.”
Of course video games, like films, take years to make, and First Light is no exception. The company announced its plans to develop the game in late 2020, so most of the game’s progress has been with both Amazon and the Broccoli family’s EON Productions as its partners. Abrak says that the change in ownership has had little impact on the game’s development.
“I think the most important thing to say here is that I’m really happy that the character and the story and all that is unchanged,” Abrak says. “We’ve been having a really good collaboration with MGM and with EON and now Amazon MGM, we’ve had a strong vision, both for the story and for the character, and what we wanted to achieve with this project, and how we want to touch people’s hearts out there. That vision has been supported.”
That means crafting an entirely new James Bond, one that will feel “right” to fans of the franchise, while also being fresh to younger consumers that may be more familiar with Agent 47 from Hitman.
“It’s very unusual for us to work on another IP, this is the first time,” Abrak says. “Because of our pedigree and our history, it’s extremely important for us to put a part of ourselves into our creations. It’s extremely important that we can put our fingerprints into it, because that just gets your creative juices going.”
The result is a Bond that is young and brash, with a cutting sense of humor, but also an optimism and naiveté that might surprise fans of the franchise.
“He is not a completely perfectly cut diamond from day one. He’s not a Bond that is completely on top of his game yet, he’s not very well versed in the tuxedos and martinis yet,” Abrak says. “It’s something that he is being introduced to, this rough world of espionage.”
Hitman, in many ways, was the perfect test case. The protagonist of that franchise, Agent 47, is an assassin for hire, but the skills he uses certainly rhyme with what Bond is known for, even if there are some significant differences in tone and approach.
“[Agent 47] is like a chess player. He’s pre-planning his moves. So in making a game where the North Star is an impulsive young man, he’s sometimes maybe reckless, there’s definitely more action, there’s definitely more systems for dialogue, systems for how you interact with with the environment and the world,” Abrak says. “Agent 47 is not a talkative type, he is more like a chameleon, whereas Bond is commenting on things, and a lot of things you feel through the joypad controller is through him, so he’s also talking to you, to the player. So to get to understand his humor, his hopes, his demeanor, those things were different. It took some time for us to hit the British humor, going from the Danish humor to the British humor, and getting that right.”
The first trailer for the game includes other Bond hallmarks, like an Omega watch with a surprise baked inside from Q, and a vintage Aston Martin DBS that appears in a playable car chase.
Still, the pressure is on. When 007 First Light arrives next year, it will need to appease both the franchise die-hards and gamers hungry for a AAA title worthy of their time. Given the history of James Bond in the video game community going back to Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64, the pressure is real.
“It’s both heartwarming and encouraging when we teased that IO Interactive is going to have a swing at 007, that the community and fans out there were super excited,” Abrak says. “There’s a lot of trust and belief in that, and obviously you don’t want to let them down. You want to make sure that trust, that belief, is delivered upon.
“There’s been so many different interpretations, there’s been so many different Bonds, and they have been keeping the IP attractive and relevant for 60-plus years,” he adds. “They all came with different things to the table, they all were relevant to their time, geopolitical, cultural things that we’ve been through the years, so they all had impact … It’s a lot of pressure making something that’s not just going to be mushy or forgettable. It’s something where you need to take some chances. It’s something where you need to make a bet for actually creating emotions in people.”
Watch the first trailer for 007 First Light, below.
