Quentin Tarantino Shares His Thoughts On What Eon Productions Should Do For Their Next James Bond Films: “I Think They Should Not Remake The Movies But Actually Just Do The Books”
Quentino Tarantino recently shared his thoughts on what Eon Productions, the production company that makes the James Bond films, should do for their next James Bond movies.
Speaking with Deadline, Tarantino first detailed how he initially wanted to do a one and done Casino Royale film, but he was unable to do so due to the Broccoli family buying up the rights to everything Ian Fleming wrote.
Tarantino revealed, “We reached out to the Ian Fleming people, and they had suggested that they still own the rights to Casino Royale. And 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. We would have cast an actor and be one and done. So I thought we could do this.”
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“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,’” he explained.
“Like every short story, every travel book. If I want to make a movie of Thrilling Cities, I need to go to the Broccolis,” Tarantino emphasized. “That’s for everything he wrote. To stop somebody from being a wise guy and trying to do what I did.”
When asked what he thinks Eon Productions, the company owned by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli and produces the James Bond films should do for their next films, Tarantino had a simple answer: adapt the books.
He told Deadline, “I mean, they always start from scratch when it comes to somebody new, because that’s saying somebody couldn’t have been going through the stuff that happened in Thunderball, all right?”
“I’ll tell you, I actually have a thought process about this. What I think they should do, and I’ve been thinking they should do this for a long time, is 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 relayed.
“They took the plot line and maybe the Bond girl or maybe the villain and then just went their own way,” he explained. “Tom Mankiewicz just goes his own way. He did the writing for a lot of them.”
Tarantino then asserted, “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.”
Tarantino’s advice is something not just Eon Productions, but anyone who wants to adapt already written material should take. There’s a reason these stories were chosen for film adaptation in the first place and one of them is because they were already well written and had proven success.
It’s just common sense to actually adapt the source material rather than writing your own stories and using the source material as a skin suit.
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Unfortunately, it’s unlikely they will take Tarantino’s advice or follow simple common sense. Ian Fleming Publications authorized new James Bond novels back in 2021 that would not feature James Bond and reimagine a number of Fleming’s classic characters.
Johnny Geller a literary agent who represents Ian Fleming Publications commented, “We struck gold with this latest collaboration with Kim Sherwood as not only is she a fine novelist but a Fleming aficionado of the highest order. Her re-imagining of some of our favourite characters and world building will delight any fan of James Bond and Ian Fleming.”
On top of this Barbara Broccoli told Variety following the release of No Time to Die that future films would explore Bond’s emotional side.
Pointing to Daniel Craig’s version of the character and his filmography, Broccoli noted that he “cracked Bond open emotionally” and “the films over his tenure were the first time we really connected the emotional arc.”
She noted they planned to continue to explore those themes saying, “It’s an evolution. Bond is evolving just as men are evolving. I don’t know who’s evolving at a faster pace.”
What do you make of Tarantino’s suggestion?
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