Quentin Tarantino has revealed that producers refused to meet with him when he wanted to direct a Bond film.
Despite being one of the world’s biggest directors, the 60-year-old filmmaker was reportedly stonewalled when he tried to adapt a classic Bond novel in the Noughties.
Whilst Tarantino would go on to make his own spy film with 2009’s Inglourious Basterds, we can’t help but wonder what could have been.
The acclaimed director made the admission during an interview with Deadline, recalling how he’d hoped to adapt Casino Royale.
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However, it was very different from the 2006 Daniel Craig film, but a film far removed from the Bond franchise.
Tarantino said: “That’s what I wanted to do after Pulp Fiction was do my version of Casino Royale, and it would’ve taken place in the ’60s and wasn’t about a series of Bond movies.
"We would have cast an actor and be one and done. So I thought we could do this.”
He was so keen to make the movie, that Tarantino even approached author Ian Fleming’s estate and asked if they had the rights to the film.
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Due to some convoluted licensing issues, at the time Casino Royale was one of the few Bond novels not owned by Eon and the Broccoli family.
But it turns out the Broccolis had been wise to someone trying to make a one-off Casino Royale, so before Tarantino could make his film they signed a ‘blanket deal’ with Fleming’s estate for the film rights to all his work.
While most people would have given up on the idea, the Pulp Fiction filmmaker decided to approach the Broccolis in an attempt to get his one-off film made.
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The veteran director even admitted that he used his connections to try to get a meeting with family, but even this didn’t work.
“No, but I had people who knew them and everything,” he explained pointedly, saying that the producers weren’t keen on altering the Bond formula after 60 years.
He said: “I was always told very flattering versions of like, ‘Look, we love Quentin, but we make a certain kind of movies, and unless we f**k it up, we make a billion dollars every time we make that type of movie, OK?'
"'We don’t want him to do it. Doesn’t matter that it will still do good. It could f**k up our billion-dollar thing.''”
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Sadly, this was the end of Tarantino who gave up on the project shortly after this.
Though he is due to retire after his next film, The Movie Critic, the director admitted he’d like to see a Bond film which is closer to the original novels.
“They never did the stories. They took the plot line and maybe the Bond girl or maybe the villain and then just went their own way,” he said.
It seems The World Is Not Enough for this director.
Topics: Quentin Tarantino, Film and TV, Celebrity, James Bond