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Steven Spielberg has made sharks terrifying, dinosaurs majestic, aliens lovable and terrifying and archaeologists somehow hotter than they had any right to be. But there is one famous franchise he never got to add to his filmography, despite trying more than once: James Bond. Turns out, he was turned down by 007 producers, and he still has a bit of snark when he recalls the experience.
While appearing on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast to discuss his 2026 movie calendar release, Disclosure Day, the Oscar-winning director opened up about wanting to direct a Bond film early in his career. The subject came up while Spielberg was answering listener questions, and he explained that he still has some feelings about never getting invited into the 007 universe. As he put it:
I have regrets that they didn’t approach me to direct a Bond film. I approached Cubby Broccoli after Jaws was a big hit.
Shockingly, Spielberg was not an unknown filmmaker cold-calling one of Hollywood’s biggest franchises. He had just directed Jaws, which became a massive hit and helped reshape what a summer blockbuster could be. Still, when he reached out to longtime Bond producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, the answer was apparently not what he wanted to hear. As the director tells it:
I’d always wanted to make a James Bond film from the day I saw Dr No. 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.
That could have been the end of the story, but Spielberg got another opening after Close Encounters of the Third Kind became another major success. This time, Broccoli reached out to him, but not to offer him the Bond director’s chair. Instead, he wanted to use the famous five-note musical phrase from Close Encounters in Moonraker. Spielberg tried to turn that request into a deal. He continued:
Then Cubby called me again after Close Encounters came out and that was a big hit, and Cubby called me a few years after Close encounters and said, ‘We’d like to use the five notes, in Moonraker.’ Dah-dah-dah-dah-daaah…. and I said, ‘I’ll make you a deal, I’ll let you use the five notes if you let me direct a Bond film.’ And he said, ‘Nope.’ But I gave him the five notes anyway… so, they consistently turn me down.
There are a few ways to read that. Bond has always been a very producer-driven franchise, and Broccoli may simply not have wanted a director whose own name and style could compete with 007. But from a modern perspective, turning down Spielberg after Jaws and Close Encounters feels like refusing a golden ticket because the envelope looked too shiny.
Of course, Bond’s loss helped lead to something else. Spielberg said Broccoli never explained why he was not allowed to join the Bond family, but he later told the story to George Lucas while the two were in Hawaii in 1977, around the release of Star Wars: A New Hope. They were there to relax and see how Lucas’ space opera was doing at the box office. When Spielberg mentioned the Bond rejection, Lucas pitched him something he thought was even better: a project then called Indiana Smith.
That idea eventually became Indiana Jones, giving Spielberg his own globe-trotting hero instead of someone else’s tuxedoed spy. So, in the long run, things worked out just fine for him. Bond kept going. Spielberg got Indy. Movie history did not exactly suffer. Still, the director had a little sting left in his answer when talking about the franchise now:
So if they ever asked me to make a Bond film now, my answer would be: you can’t afford me.
Honestly, fair enough. Decades later, after Spielberg's best films, like Jaws, E.T., Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List and Indiana Jones, he has earned the right to be a little cheeky about it. It is still hard not to wonder what his Bond movie would have looked like. But we will never know. The spy got away, and Spielberg became too expensive to chase.
Disclosure Day, the filmmaker's latest sci-fi film, crashes into theaters on June 12.
