Daniel Craig 'will return as James Bond' for 2019

After shooting the last James Bond film, a weary Daniel Craig was asked if he would ever make another. “I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists,” he said, with a nod to his double espresso.

“If I did another Bond movie,” he added, “it would only be for the money.”

Now it seems that the draw of playing the world’s most famous spy, and perhaps the multi-million pound payday that comes with it, has tempted him back.

The 25th Bond film will be released in November 2019, it was announced this week, and reports coming out of the US suggest that Craig is a “done deal” to reprise the role.

The actor will be 51 when the film comes out - a grand age for an action hero, but younger than both Sir Roger Moore and Sir Sean Connery when they made their final outings as 007 (they were 57 and 53 respectively).

‘Bond 25’, as it will be known until the title is revealed further down the line, will be written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who worked on the last six films.

It will be Craig’s fifth Bond movie. The last, Spectre, was released in 2015 and proved to be a particularly gruelling shoot for the star.

He made the remark about slashing his wrists the day after filming ended, in an interview with Time Out magazine. He did provide the caveat that he would retain the same view for “at least a year or two” and later blamed his words on over-tiredness.

More recently he has dropped hints about stepping back into Bond’s shoes. “If I were to sto doing it, I would miss it terribly,” he said.

While Craig’s take on Bond has proved popular with international audiences - Skyfall became the UK’s highest-grossing film of all time, before it was overtaken by Star Wars: The Force Awakens - it is not universally adored.

John Cleese, who played Q in Die Another Day opposite Pierce Brosnan, has said the Bond films are no longer any fun.

“The action sequences go on for too long, and it’s a fundamental flaw,” he complained. This is because they are designed to appeal to the Asian market, Cleese claimed, and “the audiences in Asia are not going for the subtle British humour or the class jokes”.

Eon Productions, the company behind the Bond films, said the new film would be released on November 8.