A lot of major filmmakers have tried, and failed, to get in the good graces of the producers of James Bond. Steven Spielberg tried and co-created the Indiana Jones franchise after getting rejected. Christopher Nolan would make Inception and Tenet after publicly talking about his love for James Bond, and not securing a job. Another director that was previously tied to an interest in James Bond and which didn’t do it, was Quentin Tarantino. In the 1990s, when he exploded onto the film scene, the Pulp Fiction writer/director had a plan for Bond, and one that meant he wouldn’t have to work with EON Productions.
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Speaking with Deadline in a new interview, Tarantino confirmed that he never actually spoke with EON about making a film in the franchise. Instead, the director was hoping to adapt the novel “Casino Royale” which had its rights tied up elsehwere and which EON did not own (this is why a 1967 adaptation starring Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, and Orson Welles was able to get made between “official” James Bond movies Thunderball and You Only Live Twice). After Pulp Fiction, Tarantino and Miramax were planning for him to take on Casino Royale as a project since the Ian Fleming Estate still owned the rights
“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,” Tarantino revealed. “We would have cast an actor and be one and done. So I thought we could do this. But then it turned out that the Broccolis three years earlier figured out somebody was going to try to do what I did. And so what they did is they just made a blanket deal with the Fleming estate and said that: ‘We have the movie rights to everything he’s ever written. We’re going to just give you a bunch of money. This is for every single thing he’s ever written. If anybody wants to make a movie out of it, they got to come to us.’”
Though that ship has sailed, everyone knows that the James Bond franchise is in an in-between state right now. Daniel Craig’s run on the character ended with him dying, meaning whichever actor takes it on next will be given a clean slate. Not that he seems eager to take on the job of making a Bond movie at this point in his career, Tarantino naturally had a plan for what he believes should happen.
“So many of the books have these really classic names and really classic adventures. And for the most part, a lot of them, they never did the book. They never did the stories,” Tarantino added. “They took the plot line and maybe the Bond girl or maybe the villain and then just went their own way. Tom Mankiewicz just goes his own way. He did the writing for a lot of them. I think they should not remake the movies but actually just do the books, but do them the way they were written. And those would all be brand new.”
