From the very first James Bond film, Dr. No (1962), producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli had an iron grip on the super-spy movie franchise, a stewardship that would remain in the family as his daughter Barbara Broccoli and stepson Michael G. Wilson took over in later decades. And also from the very first James Bond film, Steven Spielberg was a huge fan.
In an interview with The Rest Is Entertainment podcast (via The Guardian), Spielberg revealed he decided to shoot his shot after Jaws was released in 1975 (that would’ve been between 1974’s The Man with the Golden Gun and 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me in the James Bond chronology). “I’d always wanted to make a James Bond film from the day I saw Dr. No,” Spielberg said. “So I called Cubby Broccoli after Jaws and I volunteered. I said, if you need a director, I would love to direct one. And he said, ‘No.’ And he moved on.”
But Spielberg wasn’t about to give up that easily. When Cubby Broccoli contacted him in 1977 about using five notes in a distinctive musical theme from Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind in the 1979 Bond film Moonraker, Spielberg told him, “…I’ll make you a deal. I’ll give you permission to use the five notes if you let me direct a Bond film. And he said, ‘Nope.'”
Proving how nice of a guy he is, though, Spielberg added, “But I gave him the five notes anyway.”
He continued, “So they consistently turned me down—at least, Broccoli did. He never explained why he wasn’t letting me into the Bond family.” The whole frustrating saga did have an upside, though: when Spielberg told George Lucas what happened, Lucas offered him the Indiana Jones franchise instead, which has gone on to become one of Spielberg’s signature series.
Decades later, the Bond franchise got a major shake-up in 2021 when Amazon bought MGM Studios, which co-owns the Bond franchise with the Broccoli family. Barbara Broccoli immediately clashed with Amazon leadership, and she ultimately stepped down from the franchise and relinquished full control to Amazon in early 2025.
With the Broccolis removed from the equation, there is, naturally, a follow-up question to Spielberg’s story: if he was asked to do a Bond movie now, would he do it? Spielberg has a world-class answer to that, too. “…If they ever asked me to make a Bond film now, my answer would be: ‘You can’t afford me.'”
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