[JBW1949]

Hollywood wants to make “James Bond” a black guy...

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

I always felt the name JAMES BOND was the official title of the position and not the agent’s real name.

[Cronos]

James Bond, Hermione are fictional characters. The criteria to be James is really just to sound British - while Connery was very good, there was no mistaking his Scottish Burr, then you had the Welsh Dalton, the irish Brosnan etc. - Daniel Craig is english, but as a blonde, isn't what was in the books. The only bond that was as per the books was Roger moore.

So having Idris Alba as Bond would be just as good. Or even a female Bond. Remember that there have been 20+ Bond films, they need to change this to keep the next installment exciting.

As for chess - it's a musical

if they made a historical movie or a documentary where the characters were not of the correct ethnicity that would be bad - oh wait, blonde blue-eyed Charlton Heston played Moses and also a Jew during the Roman era.

[Cronos]

As to King Lear - it's a play, not historical fiction or a documentary.

And yeah during WWII a lot of British guys were Indian -- British india sent 2.5 million volunteers to fight and quite a few did fight in the Western European theatre. 4 Companies of the Indian Army Service Corps joined the British Expeditionary force in 1940 and were evacuated at Dunkirk