The article text supplied for this piece could not be retrieved properly — what was provided is only the website's navigation menu and section headers (Music, Film, Travel, Art, News, Shop, Mailing List) rather than any actual article content about Benedict Cumberbatch and James Bond. As a result, there is no substantive text available to summarise regarding the claimed near-miss casting story referenced in the headline.

Without the actual body copy, no details, quotes, or context about Cumberbatch's reported brush with the Bond role can be reliably reported. Providing a summary based on the headline alone risks inventing specifics that were not confirmed in the source material.