James Bond’s Weekend Auditions Will Test Three 36-Year-Olds the Way the Last Three 007s Were Picked

Sometime this weekend, in a London studio, three 36-year-olds will each get a few hours to prove they can be James Bond.

Deadline’s reporting, carried across the wires on Friday, put the final screen tests for the 26th Bond film in London starting October 23. At least four offers went out. Three names are public: Jack Lowden, Callum Turner and Josh O’Connor. The fourth is not. The Hollywood Reporter separately killed two persistent rumors, reporting that neither Jacob Elordi nor Jack O’Connell is testing. The tests themselves have three components, Deadline reported: stunts, camera presence and dialogue.

That three-part format is the franchise’s oldest surviving ritual. Every changing of the guard has gone through some version of it, and the files of the last three castings read like preparation material for anyone walking into the room this weekend.

Timothy Dalton’s file opens in 1968. He was 25, and Cubby Broccoli asked whether he wanted to succeed Sean Connery. “It seemed the daftest idea in the world,” Dalton recalled later. “I was only about 25 years old, and Bond should be in his mid-30s — at least.” He turned it down, then turned it down again around 1980. Broccoli reported that “the part intimidated him.” He only said yes the third time, in 1986, after reading Fleming and deciding to play the character the way the books wrote him.

Pierce Brosnan’s audition has a date on it: May 12, 1986. He auditioned opposite Annie Lambert and then did stunt work with Clive Curtis, on the official 007 site’s own account of the casting. The producers were satisfied after a three-day screen test and offered him the part. Then NBC, which had cancelled his series Remington Steele, un-cancelled it. The network held a sixty-day option on his contract, exercised it, and the Bond offer was withdrawn. Brosnan waited nine years for the next opening and took the role for 1995’s GoldenEye.

The search that ended with Daniel Craig started with more than 200 names — producer Michael G. Wilson’s own claim at the time. Director Martin Campbell later said he personally tested eight. “Don’t ask me who they were, I’m not going to tell you,” he told CinemaBlend. The names that leaked anyway tell the story: Henry Cavill, at 22, was by Campbell’s account the only actor in serious contention besides Craig, and he was judged too young. Goran Višnjić auditioned on the same day as Craig and couldn’t sell the accent. Craig was 37, and he’d turned the part down a year earlier — he thought the series had gone formulaic, and only the script changed his mind. The announcement came in October 2005.

The room itself has changed owners since Craig’s test. In February 2025, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson ceded creative control to Amazon MGM Studios, and the UK corporate filing for Eon Productions later disclosed the consideration: $20 million. Industry speculation had put the franchise’s price near $1 billion. Broccoli and Wilson stayed on as co-owners through a new joint venture, but the casting decisions now sit with Amazon’s people: producers Amy Pascal and David Heyman, appointed in March 2025, and director Denis Villeneuve, confirmed that June.

The casting director’s chair has changed hands too. The previous searches were run by Debbie McWilliams, who cast Dalton, Brosnan and Craig. This one is run by Nina Gold, whose credits (Game of Thrones, The Crown, five Star Wars films) are the new regime’s statement of intent. The shortlist reads accordingly: three television-trained British actors, all 36.

Villeneuve will direct exactly one Bond film, and he will not have final cut — the studio keeps it. Steven Knight, confirmed as the writer in July 2025, finished a first draft in September 2026 and has been talking about Fleming’s dialogue as his model; in January he called Bond “a character of folklore, it’s like Robin Hood.” Pascal told Deadline the casting would be methodical and that an announcement by year’s end was “a good bet.”

The prediction markets price the weekend differently. Polymarket’s “Next James Bond actor?” market, holding about $1.6 million, had Lowden at just under 41 cents on the dollar on Saturday morning, Turner at 16.5 and O’Connor at 7.7. The market’s most-traded contract is not any actor at all: “No one announced as next James Bond” sits at 18 cents with over $600,000 traded, the crowd’s hedge against Pascal’s timetable. A separate market gives a December 31 announcement only a 64.5-cent chance.

The birth dates add their own coincidence. Turner was born 15 February 1990. O’Connor on 20 May, Lowden on 2 June — all within four months of one another. Craig was 37 when his casting was announced in October 2005. Dalton’s 1968 minimum still hangs over the arithmetic: mid-30s, at least. The three men walking into the London studio this weekend clear it with months to spare.

The last full run of the ritual ended with the 37-year-old. He’d already turned the part down once.