Pierce Brosnan has revealed he was unceremoniously “kicked to the kerb” by James Bond producers following his final turn as the suave secret agent in 2002’s Die Another Day.
Interviewed for a new book, Some Kind of Hero: The Remarkable Story of the James Bond Films, by Matthew Field and Ajay Chowdhury, the Irish actor said his dismissal after four films as 007 came completely out of the blue.
Die Another Day was the highest-grossing Bond movie at the time, though the film suffered from derisive reviews. “I was in the Bahamas, working on a movie called After the Sunset and my agents called me up and said, “Negotiations have stopped. [Producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson] are not quite sure what they want to do. They’ll call you next Thursday’,” reveals Brosnan, 62. “I sat in Richard Harris’ house in the Bahamas, and Barbara and Michael were on the line — ‘We’re so sorry.’ She was crying, Michael was stoic and he said, ‘You were a great James Bond. Thank you very much,’ and I said, ‘Thank you very much. Goodbye.’ That was it. I was utterly shocked and just kicked to the kerb with the way it went down.”
According to Some Kind of Hero’s authors, Brosnan wanted too much money to shoot a fifth Bond movie, and producers had already decided to reboot the long-running spy saga with a grittier approach. Daniel Craig ultimately took over the role for 2006’s Casino Royale and has gone on to achieve success as arguably the most popular 007 since the days of Sean Connery.
Meanwhile, sometime Bond composer David Arnold reveals in the book that Amy Winehouse was once lined up to sing the theme tune for 2008’s Quantum of Solace. “I’d sketched out an idea musically, and I didn’t want to really do a lyric, because I thought [Amy’s] got to sing it so it would be a good idea for her to write it,” the composer reveals. “She had notes. Mark Ronson put together a rough track with a couple of layers. His love for [longtime Bond film composer John] Barry, the period and obviously with Amy’s style was coming out as a contemporary post-sixties piece. It was all the more upsetting when she couldn’t finish it, because I think it would have been something really special. Sadly it wasn’t to be.”
White Stripes frontman Jack White and Alicia Keys eventually completed the theme song for Marc Forster’s film, Another Way to Die, though the BBC’s Joe Cornish famously came up with his own version that actually used the movie’s title. Brosnan recently dismissed the latest James Bond adventure, Spectre, as overlong with a weak storyline. However, he praised Craig for a confident turn in his fourth film as the ladykilling spy.
