When the Succession lost Logan Roy, the show’s remaining characters were set to inherit a pretty penny. Now, you can benefit from Roy’s exit yourself. Now free from playing Logan Roy, Brian Cox will appear in Prime Video’s upcoming James Bond-inspired game show, 007’s Road to a Million. Cox will play “The Controller,” according to Amazon, an “enigmatic character who controls the fate of the contestants.” Participants will play in two-person teams, traveling the globe to test their wit, intelligence, and endurance in competitive challenges.
Sounds a bit more The Amazing Race than James Bond, but I guess Amazon can’t just give out licenses to kill. But I have a few more questions. The title sounds as if 007 had previously embarked on a “Road to a Million”—but I can’t remember James Bond doing anything for just a million pounds? Also, Cox isn’t playing Bond’s usual handler, “M,” but instead the mysterious “Controller”—a “villainous and cultured” figure, according to Amazon, who revels “in the increasingly difficult journeys and questions the contestants must overcome.” He has a million pounds to give away, but “whilst he lurks in the shadows, he is watching and controlling everything.” Would I have rather seen Brian Cox play the next Bond villain? You bet. Maybe the plot will make more sense when the competition show eventually arrives.
“I got to see how ordinary people would cope with being on a James Bond adventure,” Cox told Deadline. “As they travel the world to some of the most iconic Bond locations, it gets more intense and nail-biting. I enjoyed my role as both villain and tormentor, with license to put the hopeful participants through the mangle.”
It’s the first time the Bond IP has been allowed to enter into television, let alone unscripted television. “People have always come to us about doing a TV show, [saying,] Oh, you should do a Bond challenge,” 007 producer Barbara Broccoli told Variety last year. “But we always stayed away from it because we didn’t want to put people in danger and have them do dangerous things, because it’s not for members of the public—it’s for trained professionals.” Unless one of the challenges is trained assassins are coming to kill me, I guess they figured out how to keep the contestants safe. 007’s Road to a Million premieres on Prime Video sometime later this year.
Assistant Editor
Josh Rosenberg is an Assistant Editor at Esquire, keeping a steady diet of one movie a day. His past work can be found at Spin, CBR, and on his personal blog at Roseandblog.com.