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The End of Bond as We Know It: Amazon’s Cultural Acquisition
Jeff Bezos can’t wait to play with his new toy. “Who’d you pick as the next Bond?” the billionaire posted on X minutes after news broke that Barbara Broccoli had sold the James Bond franchise to Amazon, whose executives she reportedly recently called “f***ing idiots.”
This jarring transition of power over one of Britain’s most iconic cultural properties represents more than just another corporate acquisition — it signals a profound shift in the landscape of global entertainment and raises troubling questions about cultural preservation in an era of American tech dominance.
Some say it doesn’t matter because we’ve still got the old movies. Presumably these are the same people who don’t care that central London’s old, quirky, beautiful, specialist businesses have been driven out by international property speculators, so the capital now has the bland anywhereness of an airport shopping mall. This perspective fundamentally misunderstands how cultural heritage works — preservation isn’t just about maintaining archives but about keeping traditions alive, evolving organically rather than being engineered by algorithmic optimization.
JK Rowling has always understood this delicate balance, resisting the Americanisation of Harry Potter and keeping the essential Englishness at the heart of its appeal…
