Every good idea has a moment where it crosses over from a concept of its time straight into being a missed opportunity. For some of the upcoming titles on the 2025 movie schedule, the creation stories that led to some of our most anticipated releases include those sorts of narratives. Now, with a recent interview reviving the subject of Halle Berry’s failed James Bond spinoff, I think we have an opportunity to right a pretty big wrong.
Currently serving on the jury for this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the Die Another Day star was asked whether or not she’d be up for once again playing that project’s Bond Girl, Giacinta “Jinx” Johnson. Variety was on hand to report on the subject, which saw Ms. Berry offer this official ruling:
…there was a time that that could have happened. Probably should have happened. I would have loved for that to happen.
On one hand, the follow-up that saw the Academy Award winner asked if she’d play a female James Bond was answered with Halle Berry admitting she was unsure if that idea was viable. But when it came to her Jinx-based answer above, I think that response is open to some interpretation.
There’s clearly a lot of past tense being used in those statements, which seem to indicate that this idea’s time has passed. Whether it’s the extended period of time that’s passed since the idea for Jinx was floated, the fact that 007 has undergone a soft reboot after the Pierce Brosnan James Bond movies, or a reason I’m not seeing here, Halle Berry does seem to have this pitch in her rear view mirror.
At the same time, her resume as of late has shown that she’s still got the action moves required to get the job done. In particular, her roles as Continental manager Sofia in John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum, and in Netflix’s action-comedy The Union, may have rekindled those hopes for James Bond fans. There’s nothing that a re-write and/or casting of a young Jinx for the required flashback scenes couldn’t fix.
Or so one would think, until you realize that based on the details from those leaked Jinx script pages, pretty much the entire movie is a flashback. Clearly there’d need to be some tinkering, if not a full-on re-draft to hypothetically bring Halle Berry back to the world of 007. But with Amazon-MGM’s creative control deal now in place, new James Bond producers Amy Pascal and David Heyman could decide that it’s about time to test the waters with a spinoff or two.
Should that be the case, I think this needs to be the first challenge to see just how the Bond brand fares outside of the traditional tuxedoed adventures we’re accustomed to. However, it does help that Berry’s next film, the promising Crime 101, is also set up at Amazon-MGM. So this hard work just might have put her where the good luck can find her.
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