Much to everyone’s surprise earlier this year, IO Interactive revealed they’d been granted the James Bond video game license and were planning to make a new title, temporarily titled Project 007. In an interview with Danish site DR, IO Interactive’s director Hakan Abrak revealed there’s the potential for the game to be turned into a trilogy. For now, the studios are expanding so they can turn the game into something special.
IO Interactive will be building their James Bond universe from scratch. The “wholly original story” won’t be based on any of the books or movies that have gone before it. Even Bond himself will have his own unique appearance, not being voiced or appearing as any existing Bond actor. The result gives the studio enough scope that Abrak thinks “you could easily imagine that a trilogy could come out of it.”
The scope of the project means the studio will have to expand. Right now there’s the original company studio based in Copenhagen, Denmark. This was followed in 2019 by a studio in Malmö, Sweden. Between them they currently employ 200 people. Abrak expects this to increase to more than 400 employees “over the next few years.” The Bond agreement means “an insane amount” to IOI, and they want to make sure they do MGM and EON Productions proud. “It’s very, very special – a boy’s dream. Sometimes it’s still a little hard to understand that it’s us to make James Bond.”
EON Productions is run by the Broccoli family, who own the rights to decide what happens with Britain’s best-known spy. Convincing current heads Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson took some doing and was the result of nearly two years of preparation and hard work. While publisher Square Enix was disappointed with the IOI Hitman’s performance, Broccoli was not. As Abrak recounts, “our story, our background with the Hitman universe and our vision of what Bond is in a game format, went straight to the heart of Barbara Broccoli herself.” Once her permission was granted, it was merely a formality to convince movie company MGM too.
Project 007 is a long-term project that doesn’t even have any confirmed platforms yet, let alone a release date. Now that IOI’s Hitman 3 has been released, hopefully we’ll hear more news soon.
