Josh O’Connor Joins Bond’s Final Four for Screen Tests

Amazon MGM Studios has called four actors to London this weekend for final James Bond screen tests, with Josh O’Connor among them. Insiders said Jack Lowden and Callum Turner are expected to test as well, plus one name the studio has not let slip. Jacob Elordi is not in the group. A decision is expected by the end of 2026.

The tests were first booked for earlier in October, then pushed so the last men in could sit them in the same window. On paper it is an open final. The call sheet is not.

Four Actors, and One They Will Not Name

O’Connor, Turner and Lowden are all 36. That is the age band Daniel Craig had reached by the time Casino Royale opened, not the twenty-something origin Bond that leaked around the search for half a decade. The unnamed fourth is the only remaining surprise on a list that otherwise reads like a prestige-TV shortlist from the same three years.

THE THREE NAMED FINALISTS

O’Connor, born 20 May 1990 in Southampton, won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for The Crown, then led Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers and Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man. Turner came through the Fantastic Beasts films and Masters of the Air. Lowden, born 2 June 1990, has played the same MI5 screw-up on Apple TV since 2020 and has two BAFTA wins behind him. Gary Oldman, his Slow Horses co-star, said in September that Lowden was on the shortlist and that he hoped the younger man would get the call.

If O’Connor takes the job, he has already shared a film with Craig. In Wake Up Dead Man he plays a priest opposite Craig’s detective, Benoit Blanc. The old Bond and the new one would have solved a murder together before the gunbarrel even ran.

Amazon Took the Vote Broccoli Used to Hold

On 20 February 2025, Amazon MGM Studios, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli said they had formed a joint venture to house the Bond rights and would remain co-owners. Under that deal, which closed in March 2025, Amazon MGM would gain creative control of the franchise. Wilson said he was stepping back from producing. Broccoli said she wanted to focus on other work. For the first time since 1962, a new 007 will be chosen without the Broccoli family in the producing chair.

With my 007 career spanning nearly 60 incredible years, I am stepping back from producing the James Bond films to focus on art and charitable projects. Therefore, Barbara and I agree, it is time for our trusted partner, Amazon MGM Studios, to lead James Bond into the future.

Michael G. Wilson, co-owner, Amazon joint-venture announcement

Amazon bought MGM in 2022, a catalogue of more than 4,000 films and 17,000 television shows, and with it the right to distribute Bond. Creative control stayed with Broccoli and Wilson until the 2025 venture. Amy Pascal, via Pascal Pictures, and David Heyman, via Heyday Films, were named producers on 25 March 2025. Denis Villeneuve was named director on 25 June, with Tanya Lapointe as executive producer. Steven Knight was named writer on 31 July. Courtenay Valenti, Amazon MGM’s head of film, said the studio would approach every creative decision with the greatest sense of responsibility.

Pascal has done this hand-off before, from the other side of the table. In 2005, when she was at Sony, she called Craig “the ideal 21st century Bond.” She is now the producer who has to pick his replacement. Heyman spent three decades at Warner Bros. on Harry Potter and the Fantastic Beasts spin-offs before taking a first-look film deal with Amazon MGM in August 2026. The Bond film sits outside that pact, but the studio relationship does not.

Craig’s Test Week Is the Template

Twenty years ago the last open Bond recast ran on a closed set with fake titles, a built hotel room and a scene from From Russia With Love. Producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli had already decided the series needed a reboot after Die Another Day. Casting director Debbie McWilliams, who had helped place Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan, first hunted younger men to match a new-agent story. When the age range widened, Broccoli had one name at the top of her list: Craig.

He still had to test. The official history of those sessions ran in July and September 2005 under fake titles, first Destiny, then Alcatraz. Hair, makeup, costumes, other actors and a full crew were brought in. Martin Campbell, the director, later said eight people tested and that the table had to be unanimous. The press was still touting Clive Owen and Dougray Scott. Henry Cavill, then 22, was already being talked about as too young.

THE SEPTEMBER 2005 TESTS

1. 27 September 2005: Henry Cavill puts on the tux.
2. 28 September 2005: Sam Worthington shoots his day. He had turned the approach down before flying to London.
3. 29 September 2005: Daniel Craig tests, is booked for a full day, and walks at lunch. “I started the way I meant to go on, being a pain in the arse,” he later said.
4. 14 October 2005: Craig is named on the Thames, in a Brioni suit and a life jacket the Royal Marines made him wear.

Composer David Arnold, who played music on those sets, said Craig’s test was “the one who really made you sit up,” and that Broccoli “had her eye on Daniel for a long time.” Cavill was “really good,” Campbell said, “but I think at the end he was too young.” Craig, 5ft 11in, was mocked for his height and his blond hair before Casino Royale opened on 14 November 2006. The pattern was already set: leak a public favorite, run a closed test, pick the name Broccoli had wanted, then wait out the noise.

Nina Gold Has Already Cast Two of Them

The 2026 search began in spring, when Amazon named Nina Gold as casting director, in place of McWilliams. Gold is an Oscar nominee for Hamnet and has six Emmys across Game of Thrones, The Crown, John Adams and Baby Reindeer. She also casts Slow Horses. After two months of meetings, first-round auditions ran in August. Pascal, Heyman and Villeneuve cut the list and sent test offers in September. Amazon’s public line, issued on 14 May 2026, has not moved: the search is underway, and the studio will not comment on names until it is ready.

Gold is not meeting these men cold. Two of the three named finalists already got major jobs through her. Two already made films for the new producers.

TIES ALREADY ON THE CALL SHEET

• O’Connor and Gold: She cast him as Prince Charles on The Crown, the part that won him the Emmy and the Globe.
• O’Connor and Pascal: Pascal produced Guadagnino’s Challengers for Amazon MGM, the tennis triangle that turned O’Connor into a movie lead.
• Lowden and Gold: She casts Slow Horses, the series that made Lowden a spy on television before he tested to be one in a tux.
• Turner and Heyman: Heyman produced the Fantastic Beasts films in which Turner played Theseus Scamander.

That does not hand any of them the Walther. Villeneuve has not made a film with any of the three, and the camera test still has to land. It does mean the shortlist was assembled by people who already know how these men take direction, hold a close-up and behave on a long job. McWilliams used to say Bond had to stay an enigma, and that she did not want to see Elordi, Turner or Harris Dickinson in the role “because we now know so much about them.” Turner made the final four anyway. He is also married to Dua Lipa, which is the opposite of a spy’s blank file.

Stunts, Presence and a Line of Dialogue

The London sessions are built around three things: stunts, camera presence and dialogue. That is a colder brief than the 2005 hotel-room seduction, and it fits a director whose last decade has been spent on sand, steel and faces held in wide lenses. Insiders described the tests as comprehensive. Amazon, asked for comment, pointed back to its May line and said nothing else.

Knight told BBC Radio 4 in September that he had written “a bit of both,” meaning the character on the page and some idea of the person who might play him, and that a draft was done. Those remarks landed before this weekend’s tests were on the calendar, and they do not mean the part is already filled. They do mean the script was locked enough to put four men in front of it. Villeneuve still has Dune: Part Three due in December 2026. Bond is the job waiting on the other side of Arrakis.

Lowden would be the first Scot in the role since Sean Connery. Turner is the one who most looks like a poster. O’Connor is the one who can do charm and damage in the same scene, which is what Challengers and God’s Own Country asked of him. The unnamed fourth is the only person in the room the internet cannot already cast.

Why the Public Favorite Is Already Out

Jacob Elordi is not testing. Film reporter Justin Kroll said so on X as the four-name list landed, and the same reporting that put Turner and Lowden in London took Elordi and Jack O’Connell off it. Elordi had been the internet’s Bond for months, tall enough to make a stunt team redesign a door. Bond author Charlie Higson had already said he was too tall, and that Lowden would be hard to believe in a fight. The public favorite is supposed to lose this round. Clive Owen lost it. Cavill lost it. The leak is part of the machine.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The offers: At least four screen-test offers went out, with O’Connor, Turner and Lowden expected to sit them in London this weekend and into next week.
• The cut: Elordi and O’Connell are not testing.
• The brief: Stunts, camera presence and dialogue, overseen by Villeneuve, Pascal, Heyman and Gold.
• The clock: No public date for a decision; people close to the process put it by the end of 2026.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The fourth name: Still withheld. Dickinson, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Henry Cavill have all been in the rumour mill this year and are not on the named list.
• A locked choice: Oldman’s September comments and Knight’s “bit of both” line are older than these tests and do not override them.
• How public the reveal will be: Amazon has not said whether it will copy Craig’s Thames boat.

The mystery fourth is doing the job the old code names used to do. In 2005 the tests were called Destiny and Alcatraz so the footage could move around London without the word Bond on a clapperboard. In 2026 the unnamed actor is the clapperboard.

A Name by December, Then the Boat

Craig’s last Bond film, No Time to Die, came out in 2021. Five years is a long gap for a series that used to turn around on a tighter clock, and it is the gap Amazon bought when it spent 2022 to 2025 prying the rights into a joint venture. The studio now has a director who grew up on Connery, a writer with a finished draft, and four men about to be asked to run, speak and hold a lens. One of them will leave with a multi-film face. Villeneuve has talked about opening a path for missions after his own.

Some of my earliest movie-going memories are connected to 007. I grew up watching James Bond films with my father, ever since Dr. No with Sean Connery. I’m a die-hard Bond fan. To me, he’s sacred territory. I intend to honor the tradition and open the path for many new missions to come.

Denis Villeneuve, director, Amazon MGM announcement

He called Bond sacred territory he intends to honor, and a rocket off Arrakis. Pascal and Heyman said it had always been his dream to make this film, and that the dream was now theirs too. The man they pick this month has to work for whoever comes after Villeneuve, which is the part of the job the screen test cannot show. Craig got script input, a say on director and a say on key cast before he said yes. That deal was Broccoli’s gift, and she is not in the room.

On 14 October 2005, Craig arrived at HMS President by Rigid Raider, blond, slightly seasick, and already being written off. The next Bond will not need to survive that particular boat. He will need to survive a studio that has waited five years, a director with one film on the contract, and a shortlist built by people who already know his close-up. The tests end next week. The name, if the people close to it are right, follows by the end of 2026.