Jeff Bezos wanted to get rid of the producer of James Bond at any cost

The Amazon boss dropped a billion dollars to make Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson leave.

We do not yet know who will be the next 007but James Bond found his new bad guy. And his name is Jeff Bezos. A long paper from Hollywood Reporter Peeling behind the scenes of the deductible control of the franchise by Amazon, shows his big boss in Blofeld, the chief of the spectrum recently embodied on the screen by Christoph Waltz.

The most crisp passage of the article returns to the conditions of departure of the two historic producers of the saga, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson. According to the THRBezos pressed the red button after the publication of an article in Wall Street Journal who revealed that the daughter of Cubby Broccoli (the man who produced the first 16 films James Bond) qualified in private the executives of Amazon as “fucking idiots“.

“”He read the quote in the newspaper and took his phone: ‘No matter how much it costs, get rid of her’, “says an insider quoted by the THR. A version denied by other sources close to the company, which ensure that the discussions between the two parties had started long before this publication.

The fact remains that Jeff Bezos dropped a billion dollars to take total control of the franchise.

Despite the inexpensive illustration for the entrepreneur, the investigation of the Hollywood Reporter is not completely dependent on him. After the shock of the announcement and the fears about the future of James Bond, she recalls that the conservatism of the Broccoli (Michael is the half-brother of Barbara) had its qualities but also its faults. Especially when they cooled Christopher Nolanwho had expressed his interest after Tenet.

But their departure is not without consequences. James Bond has always been a family story, with the same people in key positions (casting, costumes, scenario, waterfalls) around the duo Broccoli/Wilson. And Amazon will have to start from scratch, without anyone with the experience of making a James Bond film, with its extended production, its filming spread on several continents and its long marketing campaign.

“”People think they know James Bond because they know the iconography of Martini, Pistol and Gadgets“Explains John Cork, who wrote the Bond Bible for Eon in the 1990s.”But there are lots of details below the surface that make the character still resonates 60 years later. There is a passage in the Goldfinger book which describes how the high tension is the lifestyle of Bond, how this pressure and the danger relax it. Amazon will have to find people who understand that. “

What if the simplest, ultimately, was to give the keys to Christopher Nolan?

Christopher Nolan would be Amazon’s first choice for their film James Bond