You’ve probably heard by now at one point in the aughts (circa 2004/2005) Quentin Tarantino was toying with the idea of directing a James Bond film and the 007/Ian Flemming story he wanted to tell was, “Casino Royale.” As he puts it, on a recent appearance on the Jonathan Ross BBC show to promote, “Inglourious Basterds,” the notoriously hands-on producers of that franchise thought the original novel was “unfilmable” and didn’t want to make it (even though a satirical version was made in 1967 with Peter Sellers, David Niven and Woody Allen). But of course they eventually did reboot the series with Daniel Craig and it was obviously one of the best Bond films in almost decades (too bad about that “Quantum Solace” though).
Tarantino wanted Pierce Brosnan as his Bond, but as he told reporters in 2005, “Once I heard Brosnan isn’t going to be doing any more Bond films, that killed it as far as I was concerned.” In this BBC interview, the filmmaker says he was responsible for kick starting the re-interest in ‘Royale,’ and naturally, not all that humbly. “The reason they did ‘Casino Royale’ all comes down to me,” he said pointedly. “But after I said it and talked about it, then all the big things on the Internets was that’s what all the fans want to see. So that’s when [the producers] said, ‘Oh, maybe it’s not so unfilmable now.’ ” He’s not kidding either. In a 2007 interview the director said, “I resent that none of them gave me a shout out to recognize that I’m the one who got them to make ‘Casino Royale’.” We’re probably all better Quentin did bother, no?