The Next James Bond Movie's New Director Confirmed

The next James Bond movie--known for now as Bond 25--has a new director. Following the departure of Danny Boyle last month, it has been confirmed that True Detective's Cary Fukunaga will helm the 25th movie in the long-running series, which hits theaters in 2020.

As reported by Variety, Fukunaga will start shooting the currently-untitled Bond movie in March. The film was originally set to start production later this year, with the release date set for December 2019. However, following weeks of uncertainty over who would helm the movie after Boyle's exit, it has been confirmed that it will now arrive on February 14, 2020.

Fukunaga is best known for directing the entirety of the hugely popular first season of HBO's True Detective. He also directed the acclaimed movie Beasts of No Nation and the Mexico-set thriller Sin Nombre, plus the new Netflix series Maniac, which arrives on the service this week.

Boyle left the Bond film in late August due to "creative differences." He signed on in May and the film was set to use the script he had written with his regular scriptwriting partner John Hodge. With Boyle no longer attached it is unknown whether the movie will his script, and it is possible that the producers might return to veteran Bond writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who had been initially attached to the project.

Daniel Craig is set to play the iconic British superspy for the fifth time. There had been much speculation about whether he would return as 007 after 2015's Spectre, particularly as Craig himself didn't seem very keen on the idea. However, he confirmed will play Bond again in August last year.

The Bond series remains a hugely popular franchise. Craig's first movie, 2006's Casino Royale took in almost $600 million worldwide and Spectre made $880 million. The biggest success from Craig's run was 2012's Skyfall which grossed $1.1 billion across the globe.