Fifty Shades of Grey star Jamie Dornan has responded to James Bond casting rumours.

The Northern Irish actor is perennially rumoured among fans to become "the next Bond", alongside the likes of Idris Elba, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Richard Madden.

Rumours about Dornan replacing Daniel Craig as 007 are likely to heat up once again with the release of Heart of Stone, a spy thriller coming to Netflix this summer.

As he gears up for the release of the streaming spy film, Dornan admitted to Total Film (via Games Radar) that he doesn't concern himself much with the theories.

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Karwai Tang//Getty Images

‘I've been in that conversation for a good couple of years now. Sometimes I'm more in that conversation than other times. It tends to be if you have a movie coming out,’ he explained.

The actor went on: ‘I imagine that if people are making noise about [Heart of Stone] when it comes out on Netflix, and hopefully lots of people are watching it, then you enter that conversation again in a bigger way than you were before the movie came out.

‘If people want to have your name, that's cool. I just am not one of those people who give it a huge amount of thought.’

Fans may have to wait a while for any definitive news about the next 007, as producer Barbara Broccoli admitted at the BAFTA Film Awards in February that her team hadn't "even started casting" at the time.

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MGM/Nicole Dove

The biggest news to hit the Bond franchise in recent months has been the casting of Brian Cox as the new villain The Controller for the reality competition show 007's Road to a Million.

Cox's original character will set a series of fiendish, globe-trotting challenges for contestants in the Prime Video series expected to launch later in the year.

From: Digital Spy
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Justin Harp

Night News Editor

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