James Bond fans need to strap in for a long wait, despite Christopher Nolan links

Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan's reported interest in the next James Bond reboot doesn't mean we're going to get it any time soon.

Created by author Ian Fleming 70 years ago, iconic secret agent 007 was last portrayed on the big screen by Daniel Craig in No Time to Die - released to the tune of $774m in 2021 after a coronavirus-related delay - but franchise producer Barbara Broccoli is in no rush to break out the tuxedo again.

Read more: 007's Road to a Million: Release date, stars, concept for new James Bond reality show

"Daniel gave us the ability to mine the emotional life of the character … and also the world was ready for it. I think these movies reflect the time they are in, and there's a big, big road ahead reinventing it for the next chapter and we haven't even begun with that," she told The Guardian.

Broccoli then suggested that whether audiences like it or not, Bond's relevance is bulletproof, so long as modernisation remains the watchword.

"I go back to GoldenEye when everyone was saying 'the cold war is over, the wall is over, Bond is dead, no need for Bond, the whole world's at peace and now there's no villains' – and boy was that wrong!"

This comes in the wake of Nolan's appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, where he told host Josh Horowitz that Bond's influence on his filmography is "embarrassingly apparent".

"It would be an amazing privilege to do one," he admitted. "At the same time, when you take on a character like that you're working with a particular set of constraints.

Read more: Live and Let Die and the behind-the-scenes book that would never be published today

"It has to be the right moment in your creative life where you can express what you want to express and really burrow into something within the appropriate constraints because you would never want to take on something like that and do it wrong."

As for his (hypothetical) leading man, here's who Hollywood would like to see in the prestigious role.

Watch: Aaron Taylor-Johnson insists he is not focusing on rumours he could be the next James Bond