Amazon has acquired MGM, and also recently bought into the James Bond franchise. That means Amazon owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, now has access to this iconic global cultural phenomenon, leaving me not shaken but stirred. Not only does he control the future of James Bond; he also can re-purpose the existing 007 catalog. I have some modest suggestions.

Amazon Prime could begin work on a new streaming TV series with the borrowed title From Russia with Love. It follows the fictional (?) adventures of a compromised American president who is seeking to destroy the western alliance and to subvert a valiant ally facing Russian invasion. The first episode, The Living Daylights, has that president pardoning insurrectionists who attacked law enforcement at the U. S. Capitol, setting off alarms that continue in the second episode, Thunderball. The third episode, On His Majesty’s Secret Service, finds British Prime Minister Keir Starmer meeting with King Charles to create a European bloc against the corrupted president.

In episode four, The Spy Who Loved Me, shows a Cabinet of sycophants cooperating with the corrupted president, while episode five, six, and seven (Tomorrow Never Dies, Die Another Day, and You Only Live Twice) show the valiant ally persevering against Russian aggression. Episode eight, Live and Let Die, opens with the U.S. struggling with a pandemic and a vaccine-skeptic blocking action against it. This distracts the corrupted president and his top aide who also is his top campaign contributor. The deaths continue in episode nine, No Time to Die, but the president and top aide ignore that and plot to steal gold from Fort Knox (Goldfinger, episode ten), replace it with junk bonds (Casino Royale, episode eleven), and corner the global gems and minerals market (Diamonds Are Forever, episode twelve, and The World is Not Enough, episode thirteen).

Hope begins to emerge as the graft, greed, and incompetence lead to a voter uprising; the new Congress finds new evidence of Russian collusion in episode fourteen, For Your Eyes Only. The climactic ending in the finale, Quantum of Solace, gets to an impeachment vote.

Bezos initially may be pleased with another mini-series about the owner of a private space company, Moonraker, whose competitor’s rockets blow up, Skyfall. The series, however, takes a sharp turn when that same bald billionaire buys a major newspaper (Golden Eye), spikes its presidential endorsement (A View to a Kill), drives away its cartoonist (License to Kill), and ruins its editorial page (Spectre).

Ownership of the Bond catalog opens so many options. Octopussy could be repurposed for porn. Dr. No could become T-shirts for medical professionals opposed to vaccine skeptic and new Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The Man with the Golden Gun could be educational films for gun safety advocates.

This moment calls for more than product placement and copycat scripts, and I’m ready to step forward if needed to save the world from evil.