James Bond 007 game accidentally leaks its surprise celebrity villain

The villain in 007 First Light has turned out to be a well known musician, as another publisher spoils a The Game Awards reveal early.

With The Game Awards 2025 now just hours away, publishers just can’t stop ruining their own surprises.

Yesterday, the PlayStation store spoiled the return of a certain character for Resident Evil Requiem and alleged box art of tonight’s Tomb Raider game reveal cropped up earlier this morning.

While the upcoming James Bond game, 007 First Light, hasn’t explicitly been confirmed to appear during the event, it’s looking almost certain as a new trailer was uploaded to social media before quickly getting removed again.

It was posted to the game’s official X account and while it’s no longer there, people were able to save and share it elsewhere, because of course they did.

The trailer’s quite short, but it does confirm one important detail: the identity of one of the main villains. Whether they’re the central antagonist or a secondary villain, perhaps one at the beginning of the game – if it’s mimicking the prologue structure of the movies – is not yet clear.

The villain is named Bawma, who the deleted X post describes as ‘the largest black market dealer in the Western hemisphere.’ But the most interesting detail about him is that he’s being portrayed by musician Lenny Kravitz.

Kravitz is lending both his voice and his likeness to the role, and the trailer shows him indulging in the classic trope of feeding people to carnivorous pets, in this case alligators (or crocodiles, we can’t tell).

While he’s best known for his music, Kravitz has had some acting gigs in film and TV, though it’s mostly been cameo roles as himself. His daughter Zoë is the more accomplished actor, having recently played Catwoman in The Batman movie.

As strange as the casting choice may seem, it is in keeping with the sort of stunt casting older James Bond movies used to dabble in. Grace Jones played a henchwoman/Bond girl in 1985’s A View To Kill and rapper Goldie appeared as a henchman in 1999’s The World Is Not Enough.

The part of A View To Kill’s main villain was originally offered to David Bowie, but he turned it down – so the idea of giving villain roles to famous musicians is not a new one for the series.

With 007 First Light out in March, it makes sense for developer IO Interactive to have a new trailer prepared for The Game Awards. The studio needs to be in attendance anyway, in case 007 First Light wins the Most Anticipated Game award (it won’t, though, not when GTA 6 exists).

As a reminder, despite what some American sites say, The Game Awards airs on Friday, December 12 for UK residents, since the pre-show doesn’t start till 12.30 in the morning.

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