{"id":168516,"date":"2025-06-08T20:54:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-08T20:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/168516\/"},"modified":"2025-06-08T20:54:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-08T20:54:09","slug":"007-first-light-isnt-part-of-the-james-bond-film-canon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/168516\/","title":{"rendered":"007: First Light Isn\u2019t Part of the James Bond Film Canon"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve finally gotten our first look<\/a> at IO Interactive\u2019s new James Bond game: 007: First Light. It\u2019s an origin story of the infamous spy, showing how he \u201cearned the number\u201d of 007.<\/p>\n

So far, everything we\u2019ve seen has been cinematic and story-focused, so there are still plenty of questions lingering about how First Light will play, and who exactly this new Bond will be. Fortunately, I was able to sit down with IO Interactive CEO Hakan Abrak at an IO Interactive event this weekend and grill him on everything Bond. While he wouldn\u2019t tell me who they had cast as the new Bond (the internet thinks it\u2019s Patrick Gibson<\/a>, but Abrak says they\u2019re \u201cwaiting a bit\u201d to reveal the cast), he did confirm that 007: First Light isn\u2019t part of the film canon; it\u2019s a \u201cstandalone, reimagined interpretation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think from the get-go that was extremely important for us that we will be able to put our fingerprints on this,\u201d Abrak said. \u201cThis is the first game we are making that is not our IP. IO is a creative house that’s created five original IPs and we are doing the sixth IP on the Fantasy Project [literally codenamed Project Fantasy<\/a>] we’re working on as well. So we have to pour something of ourselves into what we do.<\/p>\n

\u201c…It was such a huge opportunity to take such a beloved franchise and then a privilege to be able to pour our originality into that. And our take was, well, we wanted to reimagine his becoming story. We wanted to reimagine a coming-of-age, this young man with all his quirkiness and optimism, his wits and his personality. Getting introduced to these intrigues and espionage, this harsh world of dog-eats-dog and how he fares and how he manages that with his inner values.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even if the story itself is creating its own canon independent from the movies, that doesn\u2019t mean IO Interactive isn\u2019t taking cues from the film Bond. For one, Abrak said he got \u201csome insight\u201d into how film Bonds are typically cast and what the film directors usually look for. But ultimately, IO Interactive was left to its own devices as to how it wanted to proceed on selecting a new Bond. And it did end up picking a real actor.<\/p>\n

007 First Light screenshots\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a blank slate, which is a huge privilege, that we can cast these people or try to 3D-model something,” he said. “Is it going to be an actor, or not, and what do we do? So that was really, really daunting. I tell you this, it took a long time, and we’ve been through a few models to figure out what we wanted. But I think the process was chaotic, to be honest. I mean the process was feeling it, trying some things out, feeling the emotional… And it’s not necessarily huge A\/B tests out there with a lot of agencies and whatnot. It was very important for us to feel his warmth or charm, his quirkiness and all these things. But then we found someone and we\u2019re really, really happy about it today.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll be publishing our full interview with Abrak later this week, including discussion of not just 007: First Light, but also the future of the Hitman franchise and upcoming IO Interactive-published game MindsEye. We\u2019ll keep waiting to hear more about 007: First Light, including gameplay, sometime soon. It launches in 2026 for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and Nintendo Switch 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019ve finally gotten our first look at IO Interactive\u2019s new James Bond game: 007: First Light. It\u2019s an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-168516","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114649737675351900","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}