Days after confirming his rejected Star Wars movie was for sure never happening, Steven Soderbergh opened up on another IP he wanted to tackle: James Bond.
In an interview with The Playlist, he brought up an old story about approaching the Broccolis to take helm of a 007 movie. As it turns out, he didn’t stop at one—he pitched Barbara Broccoli two different times. The first goes back to 2008, where he wanted to give Bond a “parallel franchise” set in the 60s. It’d have been “R-rated, violent and sexy,” and while it caught some interest it wasn’t enought to move forward. Last year, Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy revealed he and Soderbergh almost worked together on a Bond idea, and it sounds like this is what that’d have been.
Flash forward years later after Skyfall, Soderbergh came back with a “twofer”: he didn’t just want to do his 60s James Bond movie, he also wanted to direct a Daniel Craig era flick, too. “I was like, ‘I want to do both, I have ideas for both,’” he told The Playlist. As he recalled, he’d only agree to doing both movies, or neither of them. By his own admission, it was “a little aggressive,” but clearly something he felt strongly enough about. Later in the interview, he acknowledged the “period piece Bond” angle could’ve become a way for other filmmakers to have fun with the character and period, but said it wasn’t the focus of that pitch. He just really wanted a “hardcore auteur low-budget, period Bond.”
Things never came to fruition, but it’s interesting to note fans online have talked about wanting a period piece James Bond movie separate from Soderbergh’s original idea. But the “two Bonds” idea may have come full circle, since Amazon’s new, alive Bond will be separate from the one in IO Interactive’s 007 First Light.
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