Hitman developer IO Interactive announced Project 007 on Thursday, a new game starring James Bond that will tell the British Secret Service operative’s origin story. Project 007 will “feature a wholly original Bond story exclusively as a video game,” one in which players must “earn their 00 status,” the studio said in a news release.
The teaser trailer is only a few seconds long, but IO gave a few more details on the website for Project 007, which the studio noted is a working title. The game is currently in active development at IO Interactive’s offices in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Malmö, Sweden, on “modern systems and platforms” — presumably meaning current-generation consoles PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, as well as Windows PC.
Bond has a long history with video games, starting all the way back in 1983 with James Bond 007 for various 8-bit consoles. In the ’90s, Nintendo held the MI6 agent’s license, leading to Rare’s beloved GoldenEye 007 in 1997 for the Nintendo 64 — based on the Bond film of the same name starring Pierce Brosnan. After a Game Boy game called James Bond 007, Electronic Arts took over for Nintendo for the next six years.
EA launched several Bond titles during its time with the license, such as 2001’s Agent Under Fire, 2002’s Nightfire, and 2004’s Everything or Nothing. The publisher announced a Casino Royale game that never came to fruition. Activision then held the license throughout most of the Daniel Craig run as Bond, from 2006-2013. The publisher started with 007: Quantum of Solace in 2008 before remaking GoldenEye 007 for the Wii in 2010.
Activision lost the license in 2013, during the development of a game called 007 Legends. Since then, no game studio or publisher has held the rights to Bond video games.
The next James Bond film, No Time to Die, is slated to hit movie theaters on April 2, 2021, after being delayed by a year due to the coronavirus pandemic. It is Daniel Craig’s fifth and final film as the infamous 007 agent. No Time to Die has a packed cast and crew, with Rami Malek as the film’s villain, Safin, and Lea Seydoux as Bond’s love interest and partner. True Detective’s Cary Joji Fukunaga directed the film, for which we’ve already gotten Billie Eilish’s new Bond theme.
Project 007 will be IO Interactive’s third self-published title after its emancipation from Square Enix. The studio released Hitman 2 in 2018, and Hitman 3 is set for release in January on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X, finishing out Agent 47’s most recent trilogy.
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