Empire UK

awards. There was love in the air.

It seemed like a no-brainer for Mendes

to become the first director since John

Glen to direct two consecutive 007s.

But then Mendes walked away. In

a statement he talked of “a very difficult

decision” but cited “theatre and other

commitments” that needed his “complete

focus over the next year and beyond”.

As we know Mendes recanted four

short months later. And just two years

after that he’s sitting in an armchair

in his Pinewood office mug of coffee

close by trying to make sense of it all.

“It was partly that Michael and

Barbara and MGM wanted to go really

quickly” he says. “In fact at one point

there was talk of releasing it this

summer. It would have been released

a month ago (in June).I said ‘That’s

impossible.’ There was also talk about

doing two back-to-back. I felt as

Daniel did that was verging on the

insane. One is almost more than you

can cope with let alone two!”

The “theatre and other

commitments” included directing

Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (“I

didn’t go off to do a tiny show — it was

almost as much work as Skyfall”) and

King Lear along with “moving back

to England and all sorts of stuff that’s

really boring.” Also even though Mendes

is a man who’s pretty much done it

all (including winning an Oscar for his

first film) directing a billion-dollar

blockbuster with a cultural footprint as

large as Skyfall’s is a different challenge

entirely. “It took me a while to get my

head around it” he admits. “But the

success of Skyfall didn’t feel like a

straitjacket. It felt like an opportunity.”

Meanwhile Wilson Broccoli and H

UNITED

KINGDOM

PINEWOOD

STUDIOS

DATEFEBRUARY 1 2015

WORDSCHRIS HEWITT

3

AM MENDES ALMOST

didn’t edit this issue.
Because Sam Mendes
almost didn’t direct Spectre.
Back in March 2013
there were over a billion reasons why
Eon’s Michael G. Wilson and Barbara
Broccoli wanted Mendes back in the
director’s chair for the 24th Bond film.
That’s how much Skyfall Mendes’
previous crack at the world’s least-secret
secret agent had raked in around the
world a record for the 50 year-old series.
But money isn’t everything; there was
also critical acclaim not for the first
time in 007’s history but certainly on
an unprecedented scale. There were

The name’s...