Steven Spielberg Once Wanted to Direct a Bond Movie. Now, He’d Tell Producers “You Can’t Afford Me”

A famous bit of Steven Spielberg lore is that from the earliest days of his career, he wanted to direct a James Bond movie, but was repeatedly rejected by franchise producer Cubby Broccoli. As the now-iconic director told The Rest Is Entertainment podcast in the lead-up to his new movie Disclosure Day, “[Broccoli] never explained why he wasn’t letting me into the Bond family” — even after the release of Jaws, the first major blockbuster ever released in movie theaters.

In Spielberg’s case, this ended up working out in his favor, as he instead teamed up with George Lucas to start a franchise of his own: The Indiana Jones films.

Said Spielberg on the podcast (via Variety), “When 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, ‘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.”

Since then, Spielberg’s done pretty well for himself as a filmmaker. Which means that now, if the current producers of the James Bond franchise asked him to direct a movie, “my answer would be: ‘You can’t afford me.’”

Bond does already have its next director lined up: Denis Villeneuve is set to take on the upcoming return of the famed British spy for Amazon MGM Studios. Still, a Bond movie directed by Spielberg… that would have been quite an experience.