Who Is the Perfect Fit for the Next James Bond?

James Bond is one of the UK’s favourite films, and with Daniel Craig vacating the role after the 25th Bond film No Time To Die (which was released in UK cinemas late last September), the rumours about who will be the next 007 have been circulating. 

The Bond fanbase is eager to know which actor will fill the position, with ‘Next James Bond’ getting an average of 98k monthly global searches on Google.

With this in mind, we set out to find the perfect fit for the role, using artificial intelligence to help us predict what the next James Bond will look like. The AI-generated imagery explored previous Bond actors along with current predictions and favourites as voted for by the public.

The UK’s favourite candidate to play the next James Bond

Who will be the next to say, ‘the name’s Bond, James Bond’ or ‘shaken not stirred’? Well, we asked 2,000 UK adults to choose which actor they believed could be the ‘best fit’ to play this iconic role.

Our survey revealed that UK’s favourite candidate to play Bond in the next movie is Tom Hardy, with almost a quarter (24%) naming him their No 1. actor of choice for this part.

Hardy was closely followed by Idris Elba who was the preferred candidate of one in six (17%) Brits, whilst the Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy was the nation’s third favourite to be the next Bond. 

However, Idris Elba was the most popular candidate among the older generations, with one in five (20%) voting him as their preferred bond. Tom Hardy was the ‘best fit’ for one in six (17%) of the over 65s, but this was the only age category with which he had to settle for second place.

One in six (16%) Gen Z-ers want Peaky Blinders favourite Cillian Murphy to take up the role, and Elba was their third choice with 12% of the vote. However, Millennials (aged 25-34) didn’t place Cillian Murphy in their top three, and instead Henry Cavill took their third-place position. 

The UK’s top 10 most popular candidates to be the next Bond

1. Tom Hardy (24%)

2. Idris Elba (17%)

3. Cillian Murphy (9%)

4. Henry Cavill (8%)

5. Harry Styles (4%)

6. Tom Hiddleston (3%)

7. James Norton (2%)

8. Jamie Dornan (2%)

9. Regé-Jean Page (2%)

10. Richard Madden (2%)

Harry Styles, who has recently switched singing for acting in Don’t Worry Darling and The Policeman, placed 5th. He received just 4% of the votes to be the next Bond. 

Recent rumours suggested that Regé-Jean Page could take up the role after starring as the heartthrob Duke of Hastings in the Netflix series Bridgerton, but he was only favoured by 2% of the public.

AI-generated imagery creates the ‘Ultimate Bond’ 

Using an AI-generated imagery tool, we created the ‘Ultimate James Bond’. We asked the tool to combine the facial features of the previous Bond actors from over the last 60 years, since the release of the first James Bond in 1962, Dr. No, played by Sean Connery.

To date there have been 25 James Bond films, in which agent 007 was played by seven different actors including Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and most recently Daniel Craig. 

Combining the facial features of the previous Bond actors, the AI produced its version of the ‘Ultimate James Bond’. We think this ‘actor’ could resemble Fast and Furious’s Luke Evans, or Emmet J Scanlan from Hollyoaks and Peaky Blinders.

However, it could also be suggesting that Daniel Craig should reconsider handing the role over to another actor, with the ‘Ultimate James Bond’ portrait also carrying his likeness. 

What will the next James Bond look like? 

According to our survey, the top three candidates voted to be the preferred candidate to play the next Bond were Tom Hardy, Idris Elba, and Cillian Murphy.

Combining the facial features of the survey’s top predictions,the AI tool created a version of what it thought the next Bond could look like. As you can see, it believes Tom Hardy is the ‘best fit’ for the role next.

Do you agree with the AI bot, or do you think someone else would be better playing the next Bond?

Could the next Bond be female?

Surprisingly, no female actors made the top 10 preferred options in our survey.

Only 1% of Brits see Lashana Lynch, who starred as MI6 agent Nomi in No Time to Die (and even took the 007 ‘title’ for a while), as the perfect fit to play the leading role in the next movie. 

Jodie Comer was the most popular female actor on the list but still only received 2% of the votes.

We may have to wait to see a female James Bond, but a Bond Girl is likely to still feature in the movies ongoing. We used the Midjourney AI tool to combine the facial features of all the previous bond girls, to create the ‘Ultimate Bond Girl’ too.

We felt that this image has similarities to the following actors that could play the role:

• Alexandra Daddario 

• Lucy Lawless 

• Hayley Atwell

Is the AI-generated imagery of the Bond Girl giving us a hint of who the next one could be? 

Only time will tell if AI has predicted the future James Bond and Bond Girl correctly, but it seems the British public would be particularly happy with Tom Hardy taking the 007 title next.

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About our study

• We surveyed 2,000 UK adults completed in October 2022 

• Search data gathered from Google Keyword Planner from 06/10/2022

• AI-generated imagery created through Midjourney. Midjourney Bot is an artificial intelligence tool that generates art. It works by taking written prompts and then ‘thinks’ about how best to visualise these, referring to billions of relevant, publicly available image sources to come up with new design.