Names have already been thrown around regarding who might be replacing Daniel Craig as James Bond when his tenure eventually comes to an end - though that appears to be some way off - and one of those constantly brought up is Idris Elba, most famous for his fantastic performance as super-smart gangster Stringer Bell on The Wire. It has
already been confirmed that Elba met with producer Barbara Brocolli to talk about taking on a Bond role, though perhaps not the one you're thinking of. We've got the feeling that a fast one's about to be pulled on us all, and Idris is being drafted it in
not for Bond - given that Bond 24 is now being targeted for a 2016 release date, and Daniel Craig still has another two or three films in him - but for the role of a villain in the next film. Live and Let Die is the second Bond novel that Ian Fleming wrote and one of the most popular, having been adapted into a film which became the start of Roger Moore's immensely successful run playing the spy.
Wouldn't it make sense that, now the Bond franchise is back on track, the filmmakers can go about their next gritty adaptation of a Bond novel after the success of Casino Royale? A Live and Let Die remake for 2016 that does everything that bit better than the 1973 version. Here's 7 things we think will happen...
7. Idris Elba Is Mr. Big
The antagonist of Live and Let Die in both the novel and film is Mr. Big, a master criminal who in the film is a drug baron, and in the novel, is a crafty coin smuggler. He was played memorably by Yaphet Kotto in the film version, and don't you think Idris Elba doesn't look too many worlds away from Kotto? One need look only as far as Ridley Scott's Prometheus for proof; Kotto played the engineer Parker in Scott's seminal sci-fi Alien, and in his recent prequel to Alien, Elba plays Janek, the Captain of the ship. Kotto was reportedly added to Alien to give the ship an international flavour, and it wouldn't be remiss to say the same of Elba in Prometheus; the characters are not too dissimilar. Therefore, wouldn't it follow that, in addition to Elba's excellent acting credentials, he would be able to effortlessly slink into the role of Mr. Big? Though Elba tends to play good guys or slick rogues these days, he has of course proven himself as a villain. This is just the sort of role that he could really sink his teeth into, and given that Skyfall's John Logan is returning to write Bond 24, we can expect another immensely well fleshed-out, entertaining baddie.