This is per sources quoted by Variety, who claim that the stars had finally aligned some time around the aftermath of the 2020 action epic, when Nolan was picking his next project to pursue. It was reported back at the time that Nolan was having meetings with Broccoli and Wilson, but nothing ever came of them. (The director went on to somehow make a billion dollars with a dramatic physicist biopic instead.) Now, we have at least one report on what the breaking point in negotiations was, and it’s one that speaks to the fascinating reality of Bond over the last three decades, where two people held tight control over the entire direction of the franchise for both good and ill. To wit: Nolan wanted final cut on any Bond film he was going to make, and Broccoli wasn’t going to grant it.
This is interesting, since, on the one hand, Broccoli’s tight oversight has been directly responsible for Bond’s massive success for decades—most notably her championing of Daniel Craig’s casting as the superspy, and selection of directors like Martin Campbell and Sam Mendes to helm hugely successful installments. On the other: This is Christopher Nolan, one of the only truly name-brand directors working in Hollywood at the moment, with a track record for both commercial and critical success that speaks for itself; it’s not hard to see why neither side blinked. (Although it does give some shading to comments Nolan made in 2023 when he was asked about all this during an installment of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, where he stated that, “You wouldn’t want to take on a film not fully committed to what you bring to the table creatively. So as a writer, casting, everything, it’s a full package. You’d have to be really needed, you’d have to be really wanted in terms of bringing the totality of what you bring to a character.” In hindsight, it reads like a clear reaction to Nolan wanting to have full control over any kind of Bond movie he made, which wasn’t going to happen under Broccoli and Wilson’s watch.)
Nolan has, of course, just embarked on his latest massive undertaking, with filming now underway on his Matt Damon-starring adaptation of The Odyssey; too bad for any Amazon execs hoping to back a giant truck of money up to his house, who might have to accept that the timing on this particular dream might never work out.
