Casino Royale. It was OK and everything, but when we think of James Bond we imagine a creaky old leather-skinned corset-wearing man huffing and puffing after baddies in a safari suit, and that isn't Daniel Craig – yet.

But, by Christ, it will be soon enough. Daniel Craig has reportedly signed a deal to keep playing James Bond for another four movies, hopefully at the end of which he'll have perfected the wheezing belly/combover combination that everyone expects from 007. But at least Daniel Craig is getting properly reimbursed for it – according to rumours, the four-movie deal he's been given will make him the highest-paid actor in Britain, which should at least mean he won't feel the need to make cock like The Invasion again.

It's been a while since Daniel Craig was drafted in to replace Pierce Brosnan as James Bond after Brosnan reportedly wanted to take Bond in a more 'sweary car park paparazzi scuffle' direction. And Daniel Craig had a lot of opposition from just about the whole world, who disliked him speaking out against handguns and losing teeth-fights with midgets and having a face that looks like a potato that's been thrown through a pane of glass.

But Daniel Craig only went and pulled it off. Casino Royale became the most successful James Bond movie ever – even though it was beaten at the box office by some penguins – and fans went crazy for Daniel Craig's gritty portrayal of a completely humourless thug playing cards while a policeman loudly described exactly what was going on in the background. But what of the future?

Well, although the Casino Royale sequel – directed by him out of Monster's Ball – is due out next year, the future of Daniel Craig's Bond has been vastly uncertain. First he didn't want to make any more 007 films, then we didn't want him to make any more 007 after he revealed the new movie's Carry On direction, and now MGM has said he's going to keep making 007 films until the day that cloned nanobots become so intelligent that they make humans their slaves. Or about 10 years, whichever comes soonest. The Guardian reports:

Hollywood studio MGM has signed the British actor, who won plaudits for his tough and rugged 007 in Casino Royale, for another four movies. It was already known that Craig would don the tuxedo jacket a second time for the forthcoming 22nd Bond film, but his further plans had been unclear. Now his future at MI6 seems assured. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Harry Sloan, MGM's chief executive and chairman, "signed Daniel Craig to do four more James Bond films" because franchises are the "the bases of any studio".

Looking at Daniel Craig's new deal objectively, it's hard not to get excited. The five-movie canon of James Bond films will give Daniel Craig the perfect 007 career trajectory – after the hungry reimagining of Casino Royale, there'll be the triumphant follow-up, then the complacent third movie, then the fourth movie that nobody goes to see and finally the fifth re-reimagining where a paunchy 50-year-old Daniel Craig teams up with German ladyspy Mingey McOrgasm and uses his laser cufflinks and invisible helicopter to try to save the world from a crazed madman who lives in a cave made out of diamonds in the centre of the Earth's core and wants to rule the world by pulling the moon out of the sky with a big rope.

And that's the James Bond movie we want to see. 

Read more:

MGM Extends Craig's Licence To Kill - Guardian