IO Interactive hopes its young James Bond will star in ‘a big 007 trilogy’

IO Interactive hopes its upcoming James Bond game can be the first entry in a trilogy.

The Hitman studio announced Project 007 via a short CGI trailer in November 2020.

It confirmed at the time that the game would feature a “wholly original” Bond story, but it hasn’t revealed much about the project over the last few years.

“So it’s not a gamification of a movie,” studio CEO Hakan Abrak told IGN in a new interview. “It’s completely beginning and becoming a story, hopefully for a big trilogy out there in the future.

“And equally important and exciting, it’s a new Bond. It’s a Bond we built from ground up for gamers. It’s extremely exciting with all the tradition and all the history there is there together to work on this together with the family of creating a young Bond for gamers; a Bond that the gamers can call their own and grow with.”

Abrak said IO views the lack of Bond games in recent years as a strength because the brand hasn’t been overexposed. And citing the high regard players still have for Rare’s 1997 classic GoldenEye, he said the studio hopes to make a lasting impact with its Bond game too.

“I don’t want to speak too big about it, but I just hope we’ll do a thing that will define James Bond in gaming for years to come. And that is not only one game, but that we create a universe for gamers to own for many years to come that we can grow with that next to the Bond on the movies.”

Abrak also said players shouldn’t have to wait long to hear more about the game.

“The production’s going amazingly well and we will soon be talking more about it. I know it was a little teaser, not a lot of information, but there’s a lot of cool stuff coming up. We are also very excited and when we are ready with that, we’ll be opening up.”

IO announced today that it has created a third-party publishing division. It has signed MindsEye, the “first AAA premium game” from Build A Rocket Boy, the studio founded by former Grand Theft Auto producer Leslie Benzies.