A new era is upon us: It’s time for the next James Bond.

With the conclusion of the previous Bond film, 2021’s No Time to Die, Daniel Craig made his exit as the legendary secret agent. Craig portrayed Bond in five movies since his debut as the character in 2006’s Casino Royale, but that same year he was already considering when his shift might end.

“It was 2006, [film producer Barbara Broccoli] and I were sitting in the back of a car driving away from the Berlin premiere of Casino Royale,” Craig recalled in a 2022 interview. “I said to Barbara, ‘How many of these movies do I have to make?’ Because I don’t really look at contracts or any of those things. And she said, ‘Four,’ and I went, ‘Oh, OK. Can I kill him off in the last one?’ And she didn’t pause. She said, ‘Yes.’ So I struck a deal with her back then and said, ‘That’s the way I’d like it to go.’ It’s the only way I could see for myself to end it all and to make it like that was my tenure [and then] someone else could come and take over.”

The search for someone else appears to be underway: A handful of names have started to surface recently, including most prominently Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who, according to Matthew Belloni of Puck News, had a meeting with Broccoli that reportedly “went well.”

The 32-year-old Taylor-Johnson has appeared in  Nocturnals, Kick-Ass and Bullet Train, plus Marvel movies Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Age of Ultron and WandaVision.

Puck noted that Taylor-Johnson would make a good choice for the 007 role because he “fits the younger direction the Broccolis want to go, accomplished but not particularly famous.” Still, with Taylor-Johnson appearing in the upcoming Kraven the Hunter and The Fall Guy, those films could make him “too famous to take on Bond.”

There’s another name in the running, too. The Daily Mail recently reported that Emily in Paris star Lucien Laviscount may also be in the running as the new Bond.

In June 2022, Broccoli firmly stated that producers haven’t zeroed in on any actor yet and that it would be “at least two years” before another Bond movie will start shooting. “Nobody’s in the running,” she said to Dateline. “We’re working out where to go with him, we’re talking that through. There isn’t a script and we can’t come up with one until we decide how we’re going to approach the next film because, really, it’s a reinvention of Bond. We’re reinventing who he is and that takes time.”