Skyfall helmer Sam Mendes says a woman should direct the next Bond

Sam Mendes has been discussing the next James Bond movie, saying the franchise needs to evolve, and suggesting a woman direct the upcoming instalment.

Sam Mendes directed two Bond films – 2012’s Skyfall and 2015’s Spectre – which between them made just under $2 billion at the global box office.

He’s since made war movie 1917, while Mendes is currently promoting new feature Empire of Light, which stars Olivia Colman and Colin Firth, and revolves around a cinema in Margate in the early 1980s.

While doing the festival circuit this week, Mendes was asked about the future of James Bond.

What did Sam Mendes say about James Bond?

Deadline asked if Sam Mendes was interested in directing another Bond movie, to which he laughed, and responded: “I don’t think they’d want me anymore. It was an incredible thing to do at that moment in my life; I couldn’t have asked for a better thing. I saw the world in a different way.

“It’s like erecting scaffolding and building an entire  world… It’s exhausting.”

Of replacing Daniel Craig as 007, Mendes said: “I don’t envy [producer] Barbara [Broccoli] having to follow Daniel’s [Craig] five movies. He reinvigorated the franchise but the franchise is so huge that it’s very difficult for a younger actor to step into that.”

Why a woman should direct the next James Bond

Barbara Broccoli has been clear about James Bond being played by a man, telling the PA News Agency in 2021: “James Bond is a male character. I hope that there will be many, many films made with women, for women, by women, about women. I don’t think we have to take a male character and have a woman portray him. So yes, I see him as male.”

But Mendes believes the key to the future of the character is evolution.

“I think that the actor playing Bond is going to evolve, the director has to evolve,” Mendes told Deadline. “I think it would be wonderful to see a woman directing Bond. I think it would be wonderful.”

When will the next Bond movie be released?

The next Bond film is more than two years away. While speaking to Deadline in June, Broccoli said: “There isn’t a script and we can’t come up with one until we decide how we’re going to approach the next film because, really, it’s a reinvention of Bond.

“We’re reinventing who he is and that takes time. I’d say that filming is at least two years away.”

And with no update since, and with the films themselves taking so long to make, the next 007 movie won’t release until 2025 at the earliest.