Quentin Tarantino directing a James Bond movie? It could have happened. During a recent watchalong of his first 007 outing, GoldenEye, Pierce Brosnan revealed that Tarantino drunkenly pitched him his ideas post-Die Another Day. Of course, martinis were involved…
“It was after Kill Bill Vol. 2, and [Tarantino] wanted to meet me, so I went up to Hollywood one day from the beach, and I met him at the Four Seasons,” Brosnan said on the Esquire stream. “Someone sent over a martini, so I had a martini, and I waited till 7:30, and I thought, ‘Where the heck is he?’ Word came down, apologies, so I thought, okay, ‘I'll have another martini.’”
This already sounds like the start of a great story but, unfortunately, Brosnan didn’t regale us with further details of how many drinks were downed – other than the fact they were both “fairly smokered”.
Then, Tarantino got down to brass tacks. In typical fashion, he wasn’t subtle: “He was pounding the table, saying you're the best James Bond, I wanna do James Bond, and it was very close quarters in the restaurant and I thought, please calm down, but we don't tell Quentin Tarantino to calm down,” teased Brosnan.
While Brosnan doesn’t open up on what exactly a Tarantino-helmed Bond would have looked like, he does say he went “back to the shop” – presumably producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli – with the idea.
Of course, the Bond franchise eventually went a different route. Daniel Craig took over as the iconic secret agent for Casino Royale, while Tarantino, Brosnan (and now the rest of us) were left to wonder what could have been.
Relive the complete saga, from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig, with our guide on how to watch the James Bond movies in order.
