Recasting James Bond Villains In 2026: Who Should Play Blofeld, Goldfinger & Jaws?

Published Oct 20, 2026, 11:50 AM EDT

Simon Gallagher has worked in movie and TV journalism for more than 17 years. He has written more than 6000 articles and reviews, and edited thousands more. He is an expert in the entertainment industry, particularly in the golden age of screen superheroes. Simon is also a Rotten Tomatoes approved critic.
 

Currently, James Bond is standing at a crossroads. We know there’s another 007 movie coming, and that a new James Bond actor is soon to be announced, with Denis Villeneuve directing Bond 26, but beyond that, the specifics are completely unclear. Will we be getting another Casino Royale-style genre reboot? What tone will Villeneuve go for? Will it be modern-day or set in the past?

It’s all very intriguing, but there are certain expectations that come with making a new James Bond movie. As 007 fans, we expect gadgets, tension, ideally an aspirational classic sports car, but above all, we expect a memorable villain capable of balancing Bond on the other side of the moral spectrum. Villeneuve has given us some excellent villains before, like Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and Prisoners’ Holly Jones, but the best Bond movie villains have a specific aura about them. A certain theatricality.

Daniel Craig’s era saw some excellent villains, and some that lacked the truly memorable edge. It’s telling, for instance, that while Rami Malek’s Lyutsifer Safin is the only villain to have successfully killed Bond, he’s mostly remembered as a poor man’s Dr No. If you can name and remember the plan of Quantum of Solace’s villain, I will give you $10. Meanwhile, Javier Bardem’s Raoul Silva was an all-timer of a monster, and Mads Mikkelsen’s LeChiffre was a chilling delight. Christoph Waltz’s Blofeld should have been great, but his backstory was a needless distraction.

An original villain is always a gamble, so could the best option for Bond 26 be remaking an older movie and bringing back an iconic villain as SPECTRE did with Blofeld? Villeneuve would at least have the strong starting point of knowing his villain already had the right magic. In the interest of that exercise, let’s look at how Eon could recast the most legendary classic Bond villains for 2026. We're consciously avoiding modern greats here: they're just too recent to really consider recasting.

7 Alec Trevelyan - Henry Cavill

If we can’t have Henry Cavill as James Bond, then the next best bet would be to bring him in as a villain. When Sean Bean played Alec Trevelyan in GoldenEye, he worked so well because he was Bond’s mirror, exactly as skilled, and convincing as a Bond alternative. How better to recast him than to choose a man widely seen as the best candidate to play Bond who never will?

Bean’s confident swagger and violent undercurrent would also work very well with Cavill, because, crucially, we’ve already seen him play this role before in Mission: Impossible - Fallout. He looks immaculate in a well-tailored suit, has physical presence thanks to his size, and would be a great foil to any new, younger Bond.

6 Scaramanga - Oscar Isaac

Strictly speaking, Christopher Lee shouldn’t have been well-cast as Francisco Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun. He was an excellent villain, who was good enough to shrug off the ridiculous preoccupation with his superfluous nipple, but he was also not particularly logical (at first glance) as a Cuban. But Lee did actually have some Mediterranean ancestry, and Scaramanga’s mother was English.

Crucially, Lee brought aristocratic elegance and an aloof charisma to the legendary assassin in an otherwise fairly uninspired era for James Bond. He wasn’t a cartoonish, volcano-dwelling megalomaniac, and instead came to 007 as a terrifying peer. Oscar Isaac stepping into the role would mean honoring the character’s Latin blood while establishing Scaramanga (with or without that third nipple) as a believably charming dark mirror to Bond. He’s played villains before, badly in X-Men: Apocalypse and very well in Ex Machina, and he’d offer an interesting alternate performance to Lee’s classic take.

5 Dr No - Cillian Murphy

Joseph Wiseman created the Bond villain template when he appeared as Julius No in 1962, with a cold, detached authority and subhuman lack of emotional depth that stood at odds with Bond’s more explosive tendencies. He was terrifying precisely because he viewed human life as a resource and utterly expendable in his aims. A new era of James Bond going back to his first villain would have some romantic resonance.

While he’s not half-Asian, as the character originally was, Cillian Murphy would capture everything that worked so well in Wiseman’s version of the character perfectly. And updating Dr No to have a slightly different backstory that doesn’t involve the Chinese element might mean losing his iconic aesthetic, but it wouldn’t impact him as a villain, given it plays no real part in his villainy. Murphy’s ability to play darkly charismatic, emotionally cold characters is unrivaled, and he’s easily the most intriguing potential Dr. No recasting.

4 Max Zorin - Jeremy Strong

Roger Moore’s A View to a Kill might not be as fondly remembered as other 007 movies, but Christopher Walken’s turn as Max Zorin was a delightful addition to Bond’s rogues gallery. He brought an unhinged, psychopathic energy as the Silicon Valley industrialist who started life as a Nazi super-baby experiment. The idea of a tech magnate turning to crime to make sure his business achieves supremacy might seem rather on the nose in 2026, but he’s one of the most overlooked, great villains in Bond movie history, and he deserves a second chance.

And what better a way to honor his techno-bro links than to bring in Jeremy Strong, who can play psychopaths extremely well, and has a theatricality about him that could stand up to Walken’s looming shadow. Zorin should be both charming and a little strange, and Strong has made good work of capturing that exact balance.

3 Jaws - Ian Whyte

Richard Kiel’s Jaws is arguably the most famous henchman in cinematic history, and yet he almost never speaks a word and created a performance tied entirely to his physicality. Appearing in only two Bond movies - The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker - he is so ubiquitous that it’s easy to misremember him as appearing far more times. He’s a relentless, Terminator-like foe, whose unstoppable force neutralized most of James Bond’s more cerebral methods of attack. And then, of course, there were the iconic metal teeth.

Recasting Kiel now means finding an actor with not only the physical profile to make Jaws a legitimate monster, but also the ability to actually perform with that stature. You could consider figures like Olive Richter or Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, but they’re arguably too muscular, and instead, a performer like Ian Whyte would be a better - if more subtle - option. He is known for playing Wun Wun the giant in Game of Thrones, the alien Engineer in Prometheus, and brings a wealth of physical performance that could make a new Jaws more than just an attempt to out-Kiel Kiel.

2 Auric Goldfinger - Jared Harris

Gert Fröbe created one of the most definitive Bond villains in 1964’s Goldfinger, making the titular bad guy pompous, greedy, and cartoonish in a way that hid a terrifying, ruthless interior. In Fröbe’s hands, Goldfinger was an aristocratic bully whose fondness for gold made him a real threat to the world economy. Once again, it’s hard not to admire how prescient these movies were about today’s business culture.

If there’s an actor working today better suited to playing a Bond villain - any Bond villain, in fact - than Jared Harris, they’ve not yet made their name. Having already played Moriarty opposite Robert Downey Jr’s Sherlock Holmes, he knows the right balance of theatricality and menace, and his classical training would be a huge benefit to the character.

1 Blofeld - Gary Oldman

Casting an exceptionally talented actor to play a new version of Blofeld didn’t really work quite recently, but that’s no reason not to try again. Played originally by Donald Pleasance in You Only Live Twice, and later by Telly Savalas, Charles Gray, and Waltz, he’s as important to James Bond’s lore as the gun barrel and the Martinis.

Pleasance’s performance - the best of the lot - was a picture of quiet, restrained menace: he was soft-spoken, calm, and just quirky enough not to be a cartoon. Even from his seat, stroking his cat, he was the convincing center of a hugely powerful, dangerous criminal wed.

Blofeld is the kind of character who requires real acting royalty, and a track record of playing larger-than-life villains. And while he’s currently best known for playing sloppy genius Jackson Lamb on Slow Horses, Gary Oldman has played elegant, terrifying villains a considerable number of times. The idea of him sitting across from Bond, and pulling the strings of a vast empire across multiple movies is wonderful and would atone for the fact that one of the greatest British actors of all time has never been in one of the UK's most important franchises.