Bond producers are looking to nail down a villain before casting the next 007

While everyone’s channeling their energy into guessing who the next James Bond will be (except Pierce Brosnan), the producers behind the franchise are more focused on who will become the special agent’s next foe.

In a new interview with producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson at The Hollywood Reporter, the duo offers some insight into the storytelling process, which begins with assessing possible Bond villains—both personal and geopolitical.

“We always sit down with our writers, and we start by thinking about ‘What is the world afraid of?’” Broccoli says. “We start by thinking about, ‘Who’s the Bond villain?’ We try to focus on that as the sort of uber story, and then we want to also look at Bond’s emotional life, and what he’ll be facing personally that he hasn’t had to deal with before. So he has two big issues in the films—one is the geopolitical one and the other is the personal one.”

After all the necessary forces of evil come into view, that’s when the focus will shift toward casting the next Bond.

“We have to think about the trajectory of the Bond films and the storylines and where we want to take them. So, that’s really the main focus at the beginning,” Broccoli says. “Once we have a sense of where we want to go, then we’ll start thinking about casting. We’re not just casting someone for one film. We’re casting someone hopefully for a decade, at least. It’s a big decision to make, and we’re nowhere near making that decision.”

That’s right. It looks like there won’t be news on who the next Bond is for a while, but that gives us plenty of time to conjecture who the next villain could be, which may be a more interesting question than who holds the title of 007.