In 1990, before he passed on the reins of the James Bond franchise to his daughter Barbara and her half-brother Michael G. Wilson, the legendary movie honcho Albert “Cubby” Broccoli offered this piece of advice: “This is the golden goose, and don’t let them screw it up. It’s fine for you guys to screw it up, because it’s your baby, but don’t give in to someone else.”

Barbara, now 47, says that she found this advice, this emphasis on family and on daring to change, ultimately liberating.

The proof of this creative freedom can be found in a reinvented action brand that has ridden the waves of rumour and speculation to produce a 21st-century movie series – one that began with Daniel Craig’s tougher introspective Bond in Casino Royaleand will continue on November 8 with the release of the follow-up, currently titled Bond 22. Bond-watching is, of course, a mildly hysterical media pursuit and every snippet of news reported with gusto: Bond girls revealed! Bond shoots in Barbican Centre! Bond stamps exposed! This puts the intensely private Barbara in that contradictory position of being both in and outside the spotlight.

Born in 1960, two years before the release of Dr No, she spent much of her life growing up on far-flung film sets. Here was a childhood, it seems, permeated by a man who does not exist. “I thought James Bond was a real person until I was 6 or 7,” she has said. “He was like this mysterious relative who people talked about. You were always waiting for him to arrive at Christmas.” She eventually succumbed to the dream and, after a stint at LA’s Loyola University, devoted her professional life to the task of bringing the childhood phantasm to life.

This emphasis on family, on lineage and continuity is crucial to the Bond franchise and the weight of the Broccoli name. In fact, at times the name seems unduly heavy for her, and she insists on doing all interviews with Wilson – her senior both in age and in production experience. She is reluctant, it seems, to let the name alone do the talking. Which is ironic, considering her brand. “You know the name. You know the number,” ran the tagline for Goldeneye.

Her choices, and those of Wilson, for the rebooted Bond franchise have been impeccable. The hiring of Oscar-winning screenwriter Paul Haggis ( Crash) was a masterstroke. Casting a simmering actor such as Craig was a smart move in a film industry enamoured of a high-kicking hustler called Jason Bourne. But torturing Bond on camera, in particular thwacking his exposed gonads with a rope, showed that the franchise had emerged in our geopolitical reality. “The world has become a more dangerous place,” said Barbara, who’s married to the producer Frederick Zollo and has a 15-year-old daughter. It is, it seems, the job of the Bond franchise to reflect that, to entertain us and to prove that nobody does it better.

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