Pierce Brosnan Backs Callum Turner to Be the Next James Bond

Pierce Brosnan has picked his Bond. In an interview with Vanity Fair published on Tuesday, 3 November 2026, the former 007 was asked about Callum Turner — the British actor long rumoured to be circling the role — and Brosnan’s assessment arrived in two words: “so strong.” The 73-year-old named Turner among the finalists to succeed Daniel Craig, giving the 36-year-old the single most valuable endorsement available in the Bond business: the public blessing of a man who has actually held the licence to kill.

Precision matters here, so let BuzzDaily be precise. This is an endorsement layered on top of casting reports — it is not a casting announcement, and it is not confirmation. Amazon MGM, the studio that now controls the franchise, has not confirmed Turner, or any other actor, as the next James Bond. No contract has been announced and no start date set. What Brosnan has done is tell the world who he would choose. That is news. It is not the same as the job being filled.

A FATHER’S EYE VIEW

Brosnan’s opinion carries a personal foundation most pundits cannot claim. He and Turner have worked together before — closely. In the 2017 film The Only Living Boy in New York, Brosnan and Turner played father and son, sharing the screen across the film’s central relationship. When Brosnan calls Turner “so strong,” he is not grading a showreel or a red-carpet photograph; he is describing an actor whose work he has stood opposite, scene by scene. Endorsements in casting races are often diplomatic. This one is informed.

WHY A FORMER BOND’S BLESSING MATTERS

Brosnan’s own tenure explains the weight of his words. He took over the role in GoldenEye in 1995 and played Bond across four films, closing with Die Another Day in 2002 — a run widely credited with reviving the franchise for the blockbuster era and bridging the gap between the Cold War Bond and the modern one. The former Bonds form a tiny club, and its members have generally been sparing with public verdicts on their successors. When one of them speaks this directly, the comment lands less like celebrity chatter and more like a reading from inside the institution.

There is also a generational logic to Brosnan speaking now. Every new Bond is measured, unfairly and inevitably, against all of his predecessors at once — the cool of Connery, the lightness of Moore, the grit of Craig. The actors who have carried the role understand that measurement better than anyone, because each of them survived it. An endorsement from within that circle tells a contender something no casting director can: that someone who knows exactly what the job costs believes he can pay it. Whether the studio’s process reaches the same conclusion is a separate question, and it is the only one that finally counts.

THE FINALIST LANDSCAPE

Brosnan’s intervention lands in the middle of an increasingly defined race. The Hollywood Reporter has reported that Turner, 36, and Jack Lowden — the 36-year-old star of Slow Horses — are the finalists, with final screen tests taking place in London. Producer Amy Pascal has said that an announcement “by the end of the year is a good bet,” a timeline that has concentrated attention considerably. Other names continue to orbit the role: Josh O’Connor, for one, has been heavily rumoured and has publicly addressed — and played down — the speculation, as Page Six reported this week. British casting watchers have rarely had a busier season; the contest over the next Hogwarts generation has been running in parallel.

The screen test, by all accounts, is where this race will actually be decided. Final tests in London are the last stage of a process that is part audition, part stress examination: the producers are not only casting a performance, they are choosing the public face of the franchise for the next decade or more — the actor who will front the premieres, the press tours and the inevitable scrutiny that follows every Bond into his private life. It is precisely because the decision carries that weight that it belongs, formally, to Amazon MGM and its producers, and not to the court of public opinion — however distinguished the voices in that court may be.

WHAT THE REBOOT NEEDS AFTER CRAIG

Whoever wins will inherit more than a tuxedo. The next film — directed by Denis Villeneuve from a script by Steven Knight, for Amazon MGM, and currently targeting 2028 — is the first Bond of a new ownership era, and the first since Daniel Craig’s tenure closed the character’s longest continuous storyline. The reboot’s task is delicate: it must honour a sixty-year formula while convincing audiences that the formula still belongs to the future. Villeneuve’s involvement promises scale and seriousness; Knight’s promises structure and wit. The missing piece is the face — an actor young enough to grow into a decade of films, established enough to carry a global launch, and unknown enough, still, to become Bond rather than merely play him. It is the profile Brosnan evidently sees in Turner.

None of which changes the formal position. The screen tests will speak louder than any endorsement, and Amazon MGM will make the announcement when it makes it — by the end of the year, if Pascal’s bet is right. Until then, the race has a favourite in the court of public opinion, and he got there with two words from a man who once ordered his martinis the same way. Turner is, in Pierce Brosnan’s judgement, “so strong.” The studio has yet to say whether it agrees.