If he really is as good as
this review of TINKER TAILOR implies, perhaps Tom Hardy could be a suitable Bond. I'm fairly certan his name has come up before, but what caught my attention was that he was a late addition to TINKER TAILOR, replacing popular Bond candidate Michael Fassbender.
If EON could somehow keep the casting of the new James Bond secret, they could do an interesting riff on THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS. EON deliberately cast actors who looked like Roger Moore as the other Double-Ohs in the Gibraltar sequence, to play with the audience's expectations of the new James Bond. It no doubt worked because this was before the internet. But I could see a pre-title sequence with Fassbender, Hardy and someone else - Gjokaj or Tennant or whoever - all sitting around in a casino. All of them are set up as possibly being Bond, but only one of them is, and he will reveal himself at the end of the sequence (before the titles give it away). Of course, this would require a massive disinformation campaign, with EON leaking conflicting reports of casting news to the media and set photos of all three actors in character as Bond and quite possibly confidentiality agreements from the actors and the press. Of course, if all of the press played along, all it would take is one journalist or editor to think that breaking news of the new Bond is worth the consequences of breaking the agreement, and the ruse would be ruined.
As an alternative for introducing a new Bond, I remember a thread on the other forums that had a pretty decent premise. It was a re-write of the GOLDENEYE pre-titles that involved Pierce Brosnan bungee jumping off the dam wall, and infiltrating the Arkhangelsk weapons depot. But when he slips down into the toilet stall and says
"Beg your pardon - forgot to knock!" the Soviet soldier is actually Timothy Dalton, who knocks Brosnan out, and then takes his place as the real Bond for the rest of the film. With that in mind, I think audiences would get a bit of a kick out of an introduction sequence that involves a horrible actor - Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner or even P.Diddy - being set up as James Bond. But right at the end of the sequence, Fassbender-Bond or Hardy-Bond or Whoever-Bond shows himself and kills the impersonator, who has actually been Bond's target all along.
