Chester-born Daniel Craig to be joined by Oscar winner Rami Malek in the 25th James Bond film

Malek won the Academy Award for best actor this year for playing singer Freddie Mercury in the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody.

The casting was announced at the film's glittering launch event in Jamaica.

Fleabag creator and Killing Eve writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge is one of the writers on the film to be released in April 2020.

Daniel Craig as James Bond in Spectre. Picture: PA Photo/Sony/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc/Danjaq/ LLC/Columbia.

It will be Daniel Craig's fifth and final outing as 007 in the yet untitled movie.

Craig was born on Liverpool Road in Chester and later lived briefly in Frodsham, where his dad Tim ran the Ring O' Bells pub. After his parents split up in 1972, Craig moved to Liverpool with his mother Carol Olivia (known as Olivia) and then to Hoylake, attending Hilbre High School.

He took up amateur dramatics with Heswall Woolgatherers, before moving to London to pursue his acting dreams.

Craig made his debut as 007 in 2006's Casino Royale and has since played the spy in Quantum of Solace (2008), Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015).

Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury

Cary Joji Fukunaga stepped in as director when Danny Boyle dropped out over “creative differences”.

The film has reportedly been operating under the working title Shatterhand, a reference to the original Ian Fleming novels where Bond and his nemesis, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, first appeared.

Blofeld used the alias Dr Guntram Shatterhand in the 1964 novel You Only Live Twice, which follows Bond to Japan where he finds his arch- enemy living under that name, hinting at the setting and basis of the new film.

Ralph Fiennes and Ben Whishaw will return as M and Q respectively, with Naomie Harris returning as Moneypenny.

Lea Seydoux will return as Madeleine Swann.

Joining the cast are Lashana Lynch, Billy Magnussen, Ana de Armas, Dali Benssalah and David Dencik.