Starved for news, outlets guess Richard Madden is new James Bond after innocuous video

It’s been a couple of years since Daniel Craig took his final bow as James Bond in No Time to Die. Producers have yet to announce who will play the superspy next, and clearly the wait is getting to people.

Want proof? Richard Madden, best known as the actor who played Robb Stark on Game of Thrones, recently appeared in a video on Instagram where he and Citadel costar Stanley Tucci drank a couple of martinis and engage in some giggly, kind-of-awkward banter. “How’s yours?” Tucci asks. “Delicious,” Madden answers. Kay.

Some fans looked at this and got it into their heads that Madden would make a good James Bond; remember that a martini is Bond’s drink of choice. “There you go, the new James Bond,” commented one fan. “To the gods of 007 this is a no brainer,” said another.

Is Richard Madden playing the next James Bond?

There are plenty of other comments, too, many complimenting the actors for their work on Citadel, which is also a spy series. Looking at the comments, I don’t get the idea that there’s a consensus that this video implies anything about James Bond.

But we got headlines from the likes of The A.V. Club, Deadline and MovieWeb suggesting otherwise. And as someone who works in online media, I fully endorse this overeach: the video is a coded message that Richard Madden will play James Bond. Stanley Tucci is Moneypenny.

But seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if we heard an announcement about the next Bond relatively soon, and Madden wouldn’t be a bad choice; honestly, he’s almost too predictable. Until then, his spy series Citadel is streaming on Amazon Prime Video now.

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