Home Rumour: Sony to offer Daniel Craig $150 million for two more Bond movies

Rumour: Sony to offer Daniel Craig $150 million for two more Bond movies

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Daniel Craig - New James Bond movie Casino Royale

This weekend past I finally got my hands on and subsequently binged in its entirety the recent high-profile BBC miniseries adaptation of John le Carré’s The Night Manager. Or as I prefer to refer to it: An Essay In Six Parts On Why Tom Hiddleston Should Be The Next James Bond.

Over the course of the miniseries, the Loki actor impressively showed off every facet of what makes a good 007, from oozing charm to gritty fisticuffs to looking damn fine in a bespoke suit in a casino. Having seen the highly-touted Night Manager, I can now completely understand why several English bookies are picking him to take over as Bond from Daniel Craig, who had his tenure as Her Majesty’s secret agent come to end with a whimper rather than a bang with the underwhelming Spectre last year. Except, according to a new rumour, Craig is about to get around one hundred and fifty million different reasons why he should not vacate the role.

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The grapevine rumblings come via UK online tabloid Radar Online, who claim that despite the fact that Craig has stated publicly several times that he is done with the franchise, “The studio is desperate to secure the actor’s services while they phase in a younger long-term successor”.

“Craig, 48, “has played a genius hand,” said the source. “Everyone knows how much executives adore him, and the idea of losing him at such a crucial time in the franchise isn’t an option as far as all the studio honchos are concerned.”

“Daniel’s the key for a seamless, safe transition as far as Sony and Bond bosses are concerned, and they’re prepared to pay a king’s ransom to make it happen.”

And time is of the essence.

According to the source, Sony should be announcing any day that the studio is re-upping the distribution rights for the Bond series, meaning billions of dollars in revenue.

“Then they will shoot two more films, which will be made virtually back-to-back, preferably featuring Daniel as 007 before he passes the figurative baton to someone else for a third movie that will mark the start of the new era,” said the source.”

The report goes on to claim that Sony are so intent on retaining Craig’s secret agent services, that they are preparing to offer him a whopping $150 million payday to star in these two films. Craig already became the highest paid Bond ever when he earned approximately £39 million (about $52 million) in total for Spectre (that includes his acting salary as well as endorsement deals). That’s more than all previous Bond actors’ salaries combined! And now the rumours are saying that amount might be tripled?!

If the italics and extra punctuation didn’t give it away, I’m finding this rumour quite hard to believe. Besides for the exorbitant monetary issues mentioned above, Radar Online have also not exactly been reliable sources for things like this. Then there’s the fact that unless something has drastically changed at the 11th hour, the last time we checked, James Bond rights holder EON Productions was shopping the franchise out to other studios, so there’s no reason why Sony would be paying anything, much less $150 million dollars.

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And as BMD points out in their report of this rumour, no two Bond movies have ever been shot back to back due to the usual massive scope in production. There were once some rumours going around that Bond 24 (aka Spectre) and Bond 25 would be shot back to back, to which Craig succinctly replied at the time “You’re out of your f*cking minds.”

I’ve always been a fan of Craig as Bond since his very first outing as the character (Casino Royale is arguably the best film in the entire franchise) and I would like him to go out on a high instead of the damp squib that was Spectre, but when an actor tells you that “I’d rather slash my wrists” than make another movie, maybe it’s time to move on to somebody else. Let’s hope they start taking Loki-ing around soon.

Last Updated: September 7, 2016

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