Bookmakers suspend betting on Tom Hiddleston being the next James Bond

[MattBrik]

British bookmakers have suspended betting on the next 007 after a flurry of recent bets were placed on Tom Hiddleston.



The Night Manager star has become the 2-1 favorite to succeed Daniel Crag as James Bond in recent days, and a particularly large gamble on the actor prompted bookmakers at Coral to halt betting.



“There’s no smoke without fire, and following the big gamble on Tom Hiddleston in the last 24 hours, we’ve had no choice but to pull the plug on the market,” a Coral spokesperson said Sunday, according to the Guardian. “Earlier in the year there was a gamble on Idris Elba and Damian Lewis, but nothing has come close to the recent gamble on Hiddleston.”



Another bookmaker, Coral, also announced Sunday that it had suspended Bond betting following a surge of support for Hiddleston.



The actor said in March that playing Bond would be an “extraordinary opportunity” and he “would not take it lightly,” but earlier this month added that the talk about him taking on the role is just speculation.



“No one’s talked to me at all,” Hiddleston said. “I think it’s come about because in The Night Manager I play a spy, and we all know that in the iconography of British culture there is a spy that we all know, and his name is James Bond. So people have made the link.”