007 Will Be a Retired Spy In 'James Bond and the Secret Agent Academy'

09.06.2025 02:01

While fans all over the world wait to find out who will become the next cinematic James Bond, the world of 007 is continuing in a big way, well outside of the films. While IO Interactive just revealed that Patrick Gibson is playing a younger Bond in a 2026 video game called 007 First Light, there's also now news that an older, retired James Bond will star in a new series of books.

That's right, Old Man Bond is officially a thing, and he'll be the Dumbledore of a new series of middle grade novels, starting in June 2026 with the book, James Bond and the Secret Agent Academy, written by noted crime writer, MW Craven. "It will feature a retired Bond, his licence to kill revoked, training a new generation of teenage spies," The Times revealed on Sunday, June 8.

The Times adds that the series will be aimed at "8 to 12-year-olds" and that the books will attack some of Bond's outdated values. "I’m going to have the children challenge him...they will know how to use new gadgets that Bond doesn’t, so they will learn from each other," says author Craven. "If Fleming were writing today, he wouldn’t write Bond the same way.

This isn't the first time a James Bond spinoff has been aimed at kids. First, way back in 1967, there was a book called 003 1/2: The Adventures of James Bond Jr., attributed to the author R.D. Mascott, which, in 2020, Bond expert Mark Edlitz revealed was a pseudonym for a writer named Arthur Calder-Marshall. 003 1/2 focused on Bond's nephew, also named James Bond. This was the exact same conceit of the 1991 cartoon series also called James Bond Jr., which, ironically or not, aired during a time when they were no new James Bond feature films out and no new James Bond actor confirmed. (History seems to repeat itself on this one!)

The most recent YA-leaning Bond projects have been a series of books called Young Bond, which began in 2005, written by author Charlie Higson and later by Steve Cole. However, none of these kid-friendly 007 spinoffs have ever presented Bond himself as an over-the-hill, out-of-work spy who now teaches kids. The only true "retired" James Bond stories in the mainstream were the 1967 spoof film Casino Royale starring David Niven, and, of course, Sean Connery's unofficial Bond movie, 1983's Never Say Never Again, in which Bond was coming out of retirement in a full-on remake of Thunderball.

Will the new book series, James Bond and the Secret Agent Academy, be amazing? Weird? A little bit of both? Time will tell, but for now, the idea of Bond as a teacher of young spies feels positively shocking.