It was not lost on people around the city Yen salsaThe name was not listed in any of the latest announcements that Amy Pascal and David Heyman would take over the James Bond franchisOr even a deal had been reached with Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson to allocate creative control. And less than a week after Pascal and Heyman were officially announced as the new managers by the franchise, Salke was out at Amazon MGM Studios.
Salke had been with Amazon MGM Since 2018, and she landed big hits such as “Fallout”, “Reacher” and “Jury Duty”, while doubled some costly swings like “The Rings of Power” and “Citadel.” But analysis after analysis in trade Friday believes that her output had everything to do with James Bond. Amazon acquired MGM back in 2022, and in that interval we are not closer to knowing what happens to 007 after we left him on that island and waited for a missile strike at the end of “no time to die” in 2021.
Her Ouster is described internally as her choice, with Salke left on the party with a new production unit that will look at film And TV store. But some think she was postponed. (Amazon MGM had no comment for this paragraph.)
So what happens to 007 now that Salke is out? Rus blisters that something was wrong goes back to December, when Wall Street Journal Bond described in a deadlock between the studio and broccoli and Wilson. It claimed that Broccoli privately described Amazon -xecs as “f – Ingidiots”, and that Bond 26 did not have a script, story or binding himself. By Salke specifically, WSJ reported that Broccoli did not care about Salke who referred to Bond as “content”, while Amazon MGM Film Chief Courtenay Valenti was described by WSJ as “Barbara Whisperer.”
It is Valenti, not Salke, who beat the deal to buy Broccoli and Wilson and to which Pascal and Heyman now report. And according to DeadlineIt was a provision that Broccolis had before Salke was formally outside. And Amazon had to pay a big check to get that privilege, something in theory Salke would have been commissioned to avoid.
It seems to give Valenti a lot of power herself, but she has a large slate on as many as 12-14 films that were released theatrally, she must worry about, something she and Salke promised on SXSW just before her now on her way to Las Vegas for Cinemacon. She will now do it as her own film manager who reports directly to Amazon Video Manager Mike Hopkins. That is why both the deadline and Thr In its assessment of Salke, the outcome shared rumors that another CEO could be brought on board just to handle bond.
Hopkins said in his memo yesterday that no compensation for Salke would be named, and they would take a couple of weeks to find out what the best new organizational structure is for the studio. Bond’s place in it can be as simple as another executive that thought of the store while Pascal (himself a former studio manager at Sony) and Heyman (who has succeeded with an equally great franchise with Harry Potter) makes it creative.
Or at the further end of the spectrum, it may mean finding an executive transition between film and TV and someone with the overall vision for everything 007. Marvel has Kevin Feige, DC has James Gunn and Peter Safran, Lucasfilm has Kathleen Kennedy. Is there an individual Bond -whisker out there who can make a full slate of 007 projects? Amazon MGM must also make the choice about whether it would like to give end clips and whole fabric to an author like Christopher Nolan Or Quentin Tarantino to do what they want with Bond, and that may not match a company’s vision.
Whatever happens, it feels like finding the next person playing James Bond will be a priority. We just know that it will not be Salke who leads the search.
