Short answer: yes he can.

As you know, last year a Sony email hack revealed that actor Idris Elba was under consideration to star as the next James Bond.

Cue outrage.

The Associated Press

SIR – Recent weeks have seen speculation that the actor Idris Elba might be selected to play the next James Bond. As various commentators have correctly pointed out, it is simply ridiculous to suggest that James Bond could be played by a black man. In Fleming's books it is quite clear that Bond is Scottish milkman called Sean (Rough Diamonds Are Forever, p94).

To recast Bond as a member of an ethnic minority is quite simply unrealistic and I suggest the producers forget about such fanciful politically correct gimmicks and return to the stark realism of the early Bond films, in which Bond nearly has his genitals cut off by a laser, or turns a car into a plane, or goes to space, or uses an ejector seat to throw villains from his Aston Martin, or defuses a nuclear bomb in thirty seconds, or has an invisible car, or arrives on a beach with a tuxedo on under his wetsuit, or defeats an entire base of heavily armed men, armed with nothing more than a pencil.

To turn Bond into a black man completely defeats the hard work the filmmakers have done to make him a plausible, nuanced and three dimensional character.

Sir Herbert Gusset

The Old Asylum

Loonraker

Somerset.

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