The word on “Spectre” is out from the U.K. and it’s… great! That is, unless you’re our U.K. reviewer Oliver Lyttelton, because he says the film doesn’t have the goods. Of course, if you crave consensus and uniformity as much as our comments section, you’ll just believe he’s crazy, but maybe, just maybe, you’ll have to judge for yourself.
Meanwhile, did you know Daniel Craig expected to turn down James Bond when he was first offered the role? “It was going to be an easy decision for me,” Craig told EW this week, assuming he would just turn it down based on all the previous films. “They were going to show me a script that was like other Bond movies. It was going to have the gags in it, what Pierce did, what Sean had done. They’d all be in there. And I could go, ‘Thank you very much, good luck with that.’ And that would have been wonderful. I would have been totally at peace with it.”
READ MORE: Review: Sam Mendes’ ‘Spectre’ With Daniel Craig, Lea Seydoux, Christoph Waltz, And More
“But they didn’t,” he continued. “They gave me ‘Casino Royale.’ It was brilliantly written because Paul Haggis had given it his all. And I went, ‘That’s what I can do something with! I can’t do an impression of anybody else.’”
The actor admitted that, despite a five-film contract (which means one more Bond, people), he did not want to make “Spectre” without Sam Mendes, the director of “Skyfall,” who originally said no to more Bond. He said, “[Mendes] had a lot of other commitments. He needed that space to go, ‘F-ck this! I don’t want to think about Bond!’… I just was like, ‘Ew.’ At first, it was like, ‘Oh f-ck.’ I thought, ‘I’m gonna do it with him. I’m not going to do it with anybody else. I want to do it with him.’”
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Fortunately, Craig didn’t have to explore any out-clauses because Mendes eventually returned to the fold. Though we wonder what Craig will think now as he’s talked about “slitting his wrists” before doing another Bond, and surely Mendes is done now. There’s also talk the movie features a bloated over-$250 million budget, but if the $1 billion recouped from "Skyfall" is any indication, maybe everyone will do okay.
Meanwhile, a new clip for “Spectre” has been released and it features Craig’s co-star Monica Bellucci. As a bonus, watch Daniel Craig shut down an annoying junkateer trying to get cute. Craig obviously doesn’t suffer fools gladly. “Spectre” opens October 26 in the U.K. and November 6 in the U.S. Watch the new clip below.
