IO Interactive’s Project 007 could be the beginning of a Bond trilogy

Now that they’ve pulled one last job with Hitman 3, IO Interactive are free to focus on Project 007, the surprise James Bond game they revealed last year. We still don’t know a lot, but IO’s studio director Hakan Abrak hopes that the game could be the first game in a trilogy of Bonds.

Talking to Danish site DR.dk, Abrak said: “We have been allowed to make our own digital Bond, which will not lean on a Bond actor. We are also making a completely original story, and you could easily imagine that a trilogy could come out of it.”

I tried to imagine it but ended up humming the theme tune to James Bond Jr. instead. It couldn’t feel more like a perfect fit for both IO and Bond. IO gets to carry over the last few years work on Hitman into one of the biggest movie franchises there is, and Bond owners EON Productions know that they’re working with a game studio that understands how to pull off a high-tech, globe-hopping spy game. It shows a lot of trust in IO that they’re not forcing the developer to piggyback the story or the character off of a movie release.

It’s a big enough project for IO that they’re looking to double the size of their current studio. They opened a new studio in Malmö, Sweden in 2019. Abrak said: “Today we are 200 employees and I expect that we will be over 400 employees over the next few years. So there is no doubt that the Bond agreement means an insane amount to us.”

That’s about it. You can now enjoy the James Bond Jr. theme as a wee treat from me.