Now under the ownership of Amazon MGM studios, the world of James Bond is about to go through a radical change and could go in many different directions that it previously wasn’t allowed to. The franchise used to be under the leadership and stewardship of Barbara Broccoli and her family, who tightly controlled the franchise and made sure it didn’t slip into quality control (sorry about “Quantum Of Solace” though).
But having since ceded control to Amazon for a big payout, the creative end of Bond is much more up for grabs than it used to be. Case in point, a story from this morning, filmmakers like Jonathan Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, Edgar Wright and Edward Berger are set to give their pitches to the new Bond management (Alfonso Cuaron has apparently taken himself out of the running, FYI).
On one hand, while many bemoan the big corporation like Amazon ruining and spoiling the Bond franchise now that the loyal stewards are not in charge, it does open up a lot of potential possibilities (a recent rumor says “Rebel Ridge” star Aaron Pierre is in consideration to play James Bond).
To that end, once upon a time, another creative pitch was turned down. Now, director Steven Soderbergh has, over the years, definitely suggested that he either had direct conversations with Barbara Broccoli about making a Bond movie, or at least always wanted to have made one.
But the secret reality of it all is that Soderbergh, along with “Andor” creator Tony Gilroy (Soderbergh produced “Michael Clayton” in the Section 8 days), had an elaborate James Bond pitch they concocted, and Soderbergh did pitch it to Broccoli.
I asked Gilroy, in a recent “Andor” interview for our The Rogue Ones podcast, if he wanted to fess up about this long-held secret, to which he answered, “No,” with a chuckle, but then confirmed it was something they had cooked up: a 1960s-set black-and-white take on James Bond.
“I think Steven tried twice to get into the Bond business,” Gilroy explained. “And it sounds to me very much like what they’re doing now is very much what [Steven] was suggesting a long time ago,” he said, alluding to Soderbergh’s attempts to get the Broccolis to loosen the creative reins and the changes that are now afoot.
“We wanted to go back to the ’60s and do it in black and white and do Carnaby St. and do the whole thing,” Gilroy said of their take, which he would have written and Soderbergh would have directed. “I thought it was a really swinging idea, like $30 million [budget], but he couldn’t get them to…they just wouldn’t give anybody control.”
Gilroy said he had a particular idea for a villain in mind, but he didn’t want to give it away, presumably because he thinks it might still apply somewhere.
“And then the other time—I don’t want to really talk about this—but I had a [good] villain,” he clarified. “The problem with the Bond [franchise] is that they can’t get a good villain that works. In my opinion, they haven’t had a villain that worked in a very, very long time. And that’s the whole problem, the rest of it takes care of itself.”
“And I had another villain from another movie that I could have transposed,” he added, suggesting he had taken an antagonist from another unpublished script that he could have swapped into their Bond movie. “And [Steven and I] had a fantasy about doing that together, but no, I don’t think it went anywhere.”
Gilroy said he never met the Broccolis and never pitched them himself, but was sure Soderbergh had at one point. In late 2023, in a separate interview, Soderbergh seemed to allude to these very pitches.
“We were at odds about some things that were important. We had some great conversations. It was fun to think about, but we just couldn’t…the last ten yards were, we just couldn’t do it, we couldn’t figure it out,” he told Happy Sad Confused.
One source close to both camps told me recently that the Broccolis were desperate to have Soderbergh at one point and, at other times, terrified of his ideas.
To that end, and to take it one step further, the same source said Soderbergh had essentially pitched an alternative Bond franchise—almost like an Elseworlds version—that would live outside the main continuity, feature different actors, would be set in the 1960s and would be much more violent. Soderbergh had apparently even reached out to David Fincher and Quentin Tarantino to see if they’d be interested, and with their blessing, used them to help sweeten the pot of his pitch to the Broccolis.
Eventually, they passed, and to his credit, when I brought up this part of the story—Fincher, Tarantino and Soderbergh doing a whole side-franchise of Bond—he had no idea what I was talking about (but to be fair, it was the same source who told me about the Gilroy/Soderbergh/Bond thing in the first place).
Regardless, there’s a huge what-if from the past. And readers with a keen memory will remember: Soderbergh once tried to make a swinging 1960s version of “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” starring George Clooney, so clearly that idea stuck with him for a long time (eventually Warner Bros. balked and gave it to Guy Ritchie instead).
Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Maybe this new Bond era will open up the doors to more filmmaker-driven creative ideas like this? Keep your eyes peeled for more. Listen to that whole podcast conversation below.
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2007. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
