James Bond Final Screen Tests: Three Actors, Five Years After Craig

By Elena Vasquez

Three British actors — Callum Turner, Josh O'Connor and Jack Lowden — will reportedly take their final James Bond screen tests this weekend, five years after Daniel Craig's 007 died in a hail of missiles at the end of No Time to Die.

That gap matters. Whoever wins the role will join the franchise after what is likely the longest fallow period in its 64-year history, a delay caused by a combination of studio indecisiveness and what reports describe as cutthroat backstage corporate maneuvering. A swarm of tipped contenders has already aged out of contention.

The takeaway: this weekend's tests could end a casting vacuum that has outlasted an entire presidential term.

Who is still in the race?

Reports say the final group numbers definitely three, possibly five actors. Some outlets state one additional actor may participate; others say two. Their identities remain unknown.

Two names are definitively out: Jack O'Connell and Jacob Elordi, both eliminated from the race for unspecified reasons. The source speculates — without confirmation — that additional candidates could include Harris Dickinson, described as the best fit, and a more famous but less suitable name in the Tom Cruise mold.

What does the screen test involve?

The test reportedly covers three elements, weighted equally: stunts, camera presence and dialogue. The stakes of each are concrete.

• Stunts: Without them, the film is boring, the source argues.
• Camera presence: Its absence risks producing a George Lazenby type — an actor who fluffs a potentially all-timer performance.
• Dialogue: Lose it and you get another Quantum of Solace.

Who is the frontrunner?

Jack Lowden leads the field, according to the source's assessment, because the opening scene of Slow Horses — a race-against-time sprint through an airport and train station, on foot and by car, with hand-to-hand combat and gunfire — functioned as a ready-made Bond audition. Working against him: a temperament the source calls too much of a "teddy bear for a sociopath like Bond," plus a subsequent Slow Horses performance that reads as "a pretty good Simon Pegg impression."

Callum Turner, the source argues, would make "a sexier Bond," citing his chemistry in the film One Night Only and his marriage to Dua Lipa — who, the source jokes, would land the role of "Bond Girl Who Dies First" if he were cast.

The source's own pick is Josh O'Connor: he looks good in a tuxedo, as The Crown testifies, and delivers "absolute nonsense" convincingly, per Disclosure Day. His most notable stunt work, however, is a long scene in The Mastermind in which he climbs up and down a ladder several times in a row.

What does the Amazon era change?

The winner will star in an Amazon-produced Bond directed by Denis Villeneuve — and that raises the bar beyond a traditional 007 film, according to the source. The screen tests, it argues, are the place to check whether the finalists can survive the new format: projecting a voice over Villeneuve's anticipated wall of sound, playing opposite side characters built to launch spin-off series for cross-media IP synergy, and not dying internally during a scene in which an Amazon drone delivers Bond his gun.

The takeaway: casting the next 007 is no longer just about tuxedos and stunts — it is about anchoring a franchise engineered as multi-platform intellectual property.