Planning for the next James Bond film is currently underway. Daniel Craig has officially signed on the dotted line to return as the special agent, and we even have a release date in 2019 for the flick. Yesterday, we reported on another rumor surrounding the plot of the film, and with all this news surrounding the movie, you’d think that they’d have all their ducks in a row to get this one off the ground.

Well, not yet. If you’ll recall several months ago, James Bond was in the midsts of a contentious bidding war between several studios (Sony’s distribution deal expired with 2015’s Spectre), and coming out in front was Warner Bros. As of this writing, we still don’t know where the distribution rights for the movie will land, if you can believe it. As stated above, Warners is still in the lead to gain the rights, but according to THR, the playing field has just become crowded with two unlikely contenders.

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In hot pursuit of Warners are Apple and Amazon. Sources told the outlet that these two companies are willing to pay the same money as Warner Bros., and with MGM looking to sign a deal for longer than two years, that obviously matters. However, the inclusion of these two giants also indicates that there may be more to this whole deal than distribution rights. THR speculates that they may be pushing MGM to either sell or license out the property wholly.

Apple is supposedly hoping to tap Bond for its television potential, and this goes along with the idea that Bond as a character is being vastly under-developed and underutilized by restricting his appearances to film. This is highlighted by the fact that virtually every other big franchise under the sun is spreading into other mediums, whereas Bond has stuck largely to film. The outlet also states that the valuation of Bond as a franchise ranges from $2 billion to $5 billion.

Should Amazon get the rights, one has to wonder if the film will elude the theater altogether and premiere exclusively on Amazon Prime. By doing that, they may very well be leaving a lot of money on the table (since less would be willing to sign on to see it, and even more would be completely oblivious to its existence altogether), but in an era where disruption is everything, it may just end up changing the landscape all the more.

Who do you think? Would you like to see Apple or Amazon take the rights? Let us know down below!

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SOURCE: THR