The name's Boyd: novelist on 007's future in the AI era

The writer, who wrote an official Bond novel, foresees a slew of Amazon spin-offs...

- Vanessa Thorpe

Among the people best placed to predict how any James Bond of the future might look is a British writer with a strong feel for spies and for spying.William Boyd has been drawn back to the terrain repeatedly in his books. What's more, he wrote his own official Bond novel, Solo, in 2013.

Now Amazon has picked up the rights to the character, Boyd foresees a succession of 007 spin-off products. "Certainly wait for Bond aftershave - and for the theme park and the dinner jackets," he said. "The new owners will have to commodify everything about their billion dollar purchase, so there will be nightclubs and vodkas."

But the novelist and screenwriter does not regard this as fresh treachery. The true defilers of Bond have been at work for decades, making films that bear little relation to creator Ian Fleming's original.

"It is too late. The great schism is that the films have nothing to do with the novels," said Boyd. "The films are preposterous action movies that have to sell globally and so cannot have too much dialogue."

Fleming's novels from the 1950s were already old-fashioned by the time the first film, Dr No, came out in 1962, Boyd argues. "Since then the film have got further and further away from the stories and the gulf is now so wide, it doesn't really matter."