IIRC, Sony had a co-production deal on Craig's first four movies, while No Time to Die was co-produced by Universal.
MGM is owned by Amazon now. There's no way Amazon lets Bond stay dormant, they've got to start seeing some return on investment.
There’s always a possibility but I think it’s very unlikely. As @Starkers said some time ago, maybe Barbara and Michael are tired of it but even if that’s the case, it’s hard to see such a profitable franchise being allowed to die. Even George Lucas sold his Star Wars rights eventually and while 007 isn’t quite that big a property, as @cardinal biggles says, Amazon have invested in it. At the very least, we’re likely to see a Bond movie from a new production team (which may be no bad thing, after all these years).
MGW is 81 and Babs's heart really doesn't seem in it anymore. [Studio] Amazon is in a state of flux. We are amidst what is likely to be the largest (both in length and fallout) Hollywood strike ever. We're seeing a dramatic trend against expensive, bombastic franchise movies in favor of smaller non-franchise or franchise-adjacent "passion project" films. The metatextual ending of the last one has a lot to say. So I wouldn't be so quick to jump to the conclusion of "There will always be James Bond."
There will be another Bond movie at some point. It being one of the world's biggest movie franchises pretty much guarantees that. Granted, it could be years down the line, maybe not even until sometime in the 2030s, but James Bond will indeed return at some point.
The latest actor to be linked with the role is Damson Idris. I won’t link to the Fail on Sunday who initially claimed that Damon (whose surname is Idris, born in Peckham to Nigerian-born parents) is the younger brother of Idris Elba (whose surname is, er, well, Elba, and who was born in Hackney to parents from Sierra Leone and Ghana). So if the rest of the story is as accurate as their research, we can probably discount this rumour.
Thought I hadn't seen Idris in anything but had as he was in a Black Mirror, though it wasn't a great one (nothing to do with him TBF). The Fail are a horrible, horrible paper but were at least rightfully humiliated over this! I think BB and MGW are caught between two stools. On the one hand Wilson is reaching an age where he should be easing back on work, if not retiring completely, and though Barbara is only 63 you do get the feeling she might have lost her taste for it, yet they don't seem willing to hand the reigns over to anyone else, whether this is not wanting to lose to kudos of running Bond, or whether they worry that the franchise will die in other hands or whether their father explicitly or implicitly made it clear they weren't to sell Eon completely I don't know, but you'd think there might be a halfway house whereby they step back but retain overall control. It feels like someone who's fallen out of love with a partner but won't divorce them because they don't want anyone else to have them. That said, who knows how much work is going on behind the scenes that we're just not aware of? Plans for Bond #26 might be further advanced than any of us realise. (I got out of the optimistic side of the bed this morning)
Factoring in inflation, are we sure JB isn't the biggest franchise of all time? I honestly don't know.
Maybe when you add up the entirety of the franchise. But if I read this article correctly, the individual movies have rarely been hugely successful money spinners, in the way that eg the Star Wars films were https://www.thejamesbonddossier.com/films/box-office-figures-for-the-james-bond-series.htm
Of course, given studio accounting tricks, it's probably impossible to know which film(s) really made what. Heck, if it suited them, Disney would probably claim the entire SW saga lost millions or billions.
I follow Ed Solomon, writer of the first Men In Black movie, on twitter, and he regularly makes wry observations about how his royalty cheques would tend to suggest that it has never made a profit!
Successful enough for them to keep making them though, so I don't see Bond fading away any time soon. I think they do need to look at the budgets though, but then they're not alone there. As someone pointed out the other day, look how amazing Dune pt 1 looks, look at it's star studded cast, yet it's budget was $165 million, compared to Indy 5's $300 million. Honestly sometimes you wonder where the money is going (and for the record I liked Dial of Destiny but de-aging doesn't cost that much does it?) Another example, I count it as Nolan's worst film but can't deny that my issues with Tenet are nothing to do with the visuals, stunts and cast yet that cost $200 million. Bond #26 should be a lot cheaper though, if only because the new guy never gets paid that well for his first film Take Craig, $3.2million for CR but that leaps up to$20 million+ once you reach Skyfall!
Long and quite good interview with Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who is ostensibly promoting Kraven The Hunter but who refuses to answer questions about James Bond. Make what you will of that… https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a44730888/aaron-taylor-johnson-interview-2023/
He also talks about certain projects enabling him to live in the UK which could be relevant, might not be. His refusal to quash rumours might mean it's already agreed, or it might just be that by doing so he keeps his profile high. Or if might be somewhere in between, he's still under consideration but it isn't in the bag just yet. If he is the next 007 it suggests Eon have been doing way more work behind the scene on the franchise that we've given them credit for.