Steven Spielberg has revealed that longtime James Bond producer Albert R ‘Cubby’ Broccoli twice rejected his attempts to direct a film in the spy franchise.
Appearing on an episode of The Rest Is Entertainment podcast, the Disclosure Day director revealed that he had wanted to make a Bond film since seeing the first film in the franchise, released in 1962.
“I've always, I'd always wanted to make a James Bond film from the day I saw Dr No,” Spielberg told hosts Richard Osman and Marina Hyde.
He said he first contacted Broccoli after the success of Jaws, which became a box-office phenomenon after its release in 1975. The thriller starred Roy Scheider as Amity Island police chief Martin Brody, alongside Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw, and follows the hunt for a great white shark that terrorises a New England resort town. The film became the first movie to gross more than $100m at the US box office and is widely regarded as one of the most influential blockbusters in cinema history.
“I called Cubby Broccoli after Jaws and I volunteered. said, ‘If you need a director, I would love to direct one.’ And he said no, and he moved on,” Spielberg said.
He continued, saying Broccoli turned him down again a few years later after the 1977 release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which earned Spielberg a best director nomination at the Academy Awards.
“Cubby called me a few years after Close Encounters and said we'd like to use the five notes in Moonraker,” said Spielberg, referring to the 1979 James Bond film, which starred Roger Moore in his fourth outing as 007.
“And I said, I'll make you a deal. I'll give you permission to use the five notes if you let me direct a Bond film. And he said no, but I gave him the five notes anyway. So they consistently turned me down.”
When Osman asked why, Spielberg said Broccoli “never explained why he wasn’t letting me in the Bond family”.
However, being rejected for Bond led to an unexpected career opportunity for Spielberg, who recalled Star Wars creator George Lucas offering him “something better than Bond”.
“I told that story to George Lucas in 1977, when we were in Hawaii together getting ready for the release of Star Wars: A New Hope,” he said. “We all went to Hawaii together to just relax and get on the phone and figure out how much money it made at the 10am shows all over America.
“And when we found out that every single 10am show had been sold out, George was just ebullient, Marsha, his wife, was ebullient. We went back down to the beach and I told my Cubby Broccoli story,” Spielberg said.
Spielberg continued: “And that's when George said I have something better than Bond. It's called Indiana Smith, which is what it was called at the time. He told me the premise of the Indiana Jones series, and that's how I got that job.”
Spielberg went on to direct all five films in the Indiana Jones franchise, beginning with 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark, which starred Harrison Ford as the globe-trotting archaeologist and adventurer. The series became one of Hollywood's most successful franchises, grossing more than $2.3bn worldwide across five films.
The most recent instalment, 2023's Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, saw Ford reprise the role alongside Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Mads Mikkelsen, and Antonio Banderas.
Although Spielberg said he spent years hoping to direct a Bond film, he suggested that his interest has now waned. “So if they ever asked me to make a Bond film now, my answer would be: you can't afford me.”
In February last year, longtime producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson announced that Amazon MGM Studios would assume creative control of James Bond through a new joint venture, ending more than six decades of creative oversight by the Broccoli family.
Broccoli and Wilson remain co-owners of the franchise, but Amazon MGM now leads its creative direction and is developing the next Bond film. Casting director Nina Gold and director Denis Villeneuve have begun auditioning actors to succeed Daniel Craig as 007, five years after Craig's final appearance in the role in 2021's No Time to Die.
The actors considered frontrunners to play Bond include Callum Turner, Jacob Elordi, Harris Dickinson, Jack Lowden, and Louis Partridge.
