Gravity director Alfonso Cuarón turned down an offer to make a James Bond movie. “I was troubled about the idea of doing it,” he said.
Who will direct the next James Bond movie? Who will star in the next James Bond movie? At the time of writing, those remain open questions. One filmmaker we can probably mark as out of the running, though, is Children Of Men and Gravity director Alfonso Cuarón.
The filmmaker has revealed that he was once “offered a Bond film” but ultimately turned it down – partly because the thought of making it made him feel uneasy, and partly because he had a pivotal dinner conversation with fellow director Joel Coen.
This nugget of information came up at the Marrakech Film Festival, in which Cuarón talked at length about his career to date. In Cuarón’s telling, it actually sounds as though he got some way into pre-production on an unspecified Bond film when he suddenly had second thoughts.
“Ages ago I was offered a Bond film,” the director told the audience, as reported by Variety. “And I said, ‘Yeah, cool. Maybe Bond. I am going to do one.’ And then when the process started and I was going to shoot all the dialogue and stuff, there was a [separate] team doing all the action scenes. It kind of felt very weird.”
Read more: James Bond 26 | Here are the rumours of the day
Already perturbed by the notion of letting a second unit director shoot half a film in his absence, Cuarón made his final decision over that aforementioned meal with Joel Coen, who made such classics as Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski and No Country For Old Men with his brother Ethan.
“Joel, what do you think of Bond?” Cuarón asked Coen over an unspecified meal.
“Oh cool, I enjoy Bond,” Coen said, not quite getting what Cuarón was driving at.
“Would you do a Bond film?” Cuarón asked.
Then came Coen’s deal-breaking reply: “It probably falls into the category of a film I want to watch but not do.”
With that, Cuarón firmly ruled himself out of making a James Bond movie.
Being the globe-spanning, stunt-filled enterprises they are, Bond films aren’t every director’s idea of a good time. Sam Mendes, who directed Skyfall and Spectre, recently said that the franchise’s producers favour filmmakers “who are more controllable.” It’s a sentiment that filmmaker Danny Boyle might agree with; he was hired as the original director of No Time To Die in 2018, but left within months after clashes with producers over its script.
No Time To Die was ultimately directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga and came out in 2021. Something of a season finale for Daniel Craig’s incarnation of Bond, its release has been followed by three years of utter silence. There have been rumours of various picturesque actors taking on the super spy mantle; assorted directors – including Edward Berger – have been whispered about and then dismissed.
Whoever ultimately directs, they’ll have to get used to the “very weird” sensation of making one of the biggest franchises on the planet – and all the second unit action work it entails.
