Amazon has found its ringmaster for 007’s Road to a Million, an Amazing Race-style game show based on the James Bond movies: Brian Cox, the veteran Scottish actor recently best known for his turn as the monstrous media patriarch Logan Roy on Succession.
In fact, it sounds as though Cox has been recruited specifically to bring that Logan Roy energy to the role of The Controller. The Controller is a shadowy figure who presides over fates of the show’s contestants, and is seemingly equal parts Bond villain and equivalent of Bond’s spymaster, M.
“The Controller is villainous and cultured, and revels in the increasingly difficult journeys and questions the contestants must overcome,” says the press release. “He has millions of pounds to give away — up to £1M per couple — but he doesn’t make it easy. Whilst he lurks in the shadows, he is watching and controlling everything.” So, he’s rich, cruel, and a control freak. Got it.
“I enjoyed my role as both villain and tormentor, with license to put the hopeful participants through the mangle,” said Cox in a statement. It was not revealed if he would be making contestants play Boar on the Floor.
007’s Race to a Million confronts contestants, in teams of two, with physical and mental challenges as they compete in a globe-trotting adventure that will take in many iconic Bond locations, including the Scottish Highlands, Venice, and Jamaica.
With Succession drawing to a close with its current, fourth season, 007’s Race to a Million presents Cox with the perfect opportunity to cash in the cachet he has built up on the buzzy show. It’s a perfect fit — not least because Logan Roy probably would make a great Bond villain. There’s even precedent to prove it. In the 1997 Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, Jonathan Pryce played the antagonist Elliot Carver, a megalomaniac media baron allegedly based — like Logan Roy — on Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch.
