When it was announced that Daniel Craig would be portraying James Bond, fans ran amok with anger, going to great lengths to show their displeasure with the casting. But when Casino Royale hit theatres, it became apparent that their grievances were misplaced.
The movie was a hit amongst the fans who couldn’t help but obsess over it. A new iteration of James Bond was born. And Quentin Tarantino believes that it wouldn’t have been possible without his constant efforts.
Quentin Tarantino was looking to make his own Casino Royale
When Ian Fleming published Casino Royale, the first of his James Bond books all the way back in 1953, little did he know that his brainchild would be one of the most lucrative intellectual property in the movie industry. And one of the most contested as well.
One person who sought to work on the story was none other than Quentin Tarantino. The Pulp Fiction director was hellbent on bringing to life a version of the 1953 story to the big screen that would take us back to the old days, paying homage to the original book. Little did he know that the convoluted web of rights would prove to be a thorn in his side.
Who really owned James Bond?
The film rights to all of Ian Fleming’s novels, except Casino Royale and Thunderball, would be bought by Harry Saltzman. Why was Casino Royale excluded though? Because rights to the novel had already been bought by James Ratoff, upon whose demise the rights would be transferred to producer Charles Feldman. The producer would be happy to sit on the rights.
In the meantime, Harry Saltzman, along with Albert ‘Cubby’ Brocolli, would in association with Eon Productions, produce Dr. No, a movie that inspired Feldman to make the 1967 version of Casino Royale, in association with Columbia Studios. But come 1989, Columbia Pictures would be sold by Sony Pictures. Sony would later endeavor to strike a deal with MGM Studios to procure rights to Spider-Man in return for the film rights to Casino Royale.
The deal was a success.
Why Quentin Tarantino’s Casino Royale did not see the light of day
Unbeknownst to this maze, the Django Unchained director was harboring hopes of making Casino Royale in his own style. Years down the lane, he told Deadline,
“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…”
Yet it wouldn’t go to plan, as he continued,
“But then it turned out that the Broccolis (working with Eon Productions) 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.”
There still existed a possibility of a Tarantino version. But his hopes were dashed to the ground because of his emphasis on doing a standalone project which was directly in conflict with what the studio wanted.
In spite of the fact that the movie did not come to pass, the Kill Bill director believes that Casino Royale would not have come to pass had it not been for his intense lobbying.
CBS bought the TV rights in 1954 and the first production of Casino Royale was as an episode of Climax, an anthology series on CBS. Peter Lorre was bad guy Le Chiffre, and Barry Nelson was signed up to play Combined Intelligence agent ‘Jimmy’ Bond. It wasn’t particularly popular.… pic.twitter.com/0NnzOEi46l
— All The Right Movies (@ATRightMovies) January 5, 2024
We can’t know for sure how true his claims are. All we know is that we got to see a version of James Bond that we all fell in love with.
Source: Twitter
