[user104658]

Originally Posted by GiRTh

The TV spy series Alias had a top female Russian spy played by black woman Gina Torres with the back story that she was trained in Cuba. It worked. But if you say its not possible then I'll take your word for it.

Yes but that's the character's back-story, so it's fine.

You can't CHANGE an established character's back story once you've established it, without doing a reboot. You break the canon and in doing so kill the immersion for many people... it's that simple.

If they want a black (or any other race) Bond, in my view, they have two paths they can take:

1) Introduce another agent and explain that "James Bond" is actually one of a selection of anonymous alias titles given to agents in an upcoming Bond film; feature the new agent heavily to get people invested, and then kill off the current Bond at the end and have that new agent take on the 007 code and "James Bond" name. Controversial? Sure... but perfectly acceptable narrative-wise.

2) Reboot the series again, make a new origins movie and brand new interpretation of the source material. Then you can basically do whatever you want with any character you want.