Naomie Harris has confirmed she’s still pushing for a James Bond spin-off featuring Moneypenny, after the idea was previously mooted and shot down.
Back in 2019, it was revealed that director Barry Jenkins – who worked with Harris on the Oscar-winning 2016 film Moonlight – was keen to helm a film with Eve Moneypenny in the lead role, but the project never came to fruition.
“It’s got to happen, please!” Harris told RadioTimes.com in a recent interview. “Barry Jenkins, who directed me in Moonlight, was pitching for a spin-off. He really wanted a spin-off. But, yeah, Barbara [Broccoli, Bond producer] unfortunately didn’t think go for that idea.
“But maybe now? You know, with time maybe?”
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The Moneypenny character has, of course, received a spin-off of sorts – in book form, with author Samantha Weinberg (writing under the pseudonym Kate Westbrook) penning a series of novels and short stories as The Moneypenny Diaries between 2005 and 2008. What price a big-screen adaptation?
Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson have recently opened up about their reluctance to green-light any spin-offs from the main series, ruling out TV show spin-offs from the 007 franchise in the mould of Marvel.
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“From our point of view, we try to focus on making good James Bond pictures and that takes a lot of time and thought – it takes a couple of years working on the script with a director,” Wilson told The Wrap.
“If we had to make a TV series on top of that and put that same amount of energy into 10 or 20 hours of content, that’s a big commitment. So, we’d have to delegate. And we’ve been very reluctant to delegate.”
For her part, Harris told RadioTimes.com that she’s unsure if she’ll play Moneypenny again in future projects following Daniel Craig’s final Bond film No Time to Die.
“I don’t [know], I wish I did,” she said. “I would love to come back, because the franchise means so much to me.”
Read more about James Bond:
- Naomie Harris didn’t believe No Time to Die ending was real: “I thought, is this a joke?”
- Naomie Harris offers her advice to the next James Bond: “Don’t get intimidated”
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