Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was determined to get rid of 007 producer Barbara Broccoli, even telling his staff he wanted her gone, “no matter how much it costs,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Amazon acquired the James Bond franchise for close to a billion dollars, and though Broccoli inherited it from her father Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, along with her half-brother Michael G. Wilson, who collectively have been called “the heart of and soul of the franchise,” Bezos wasn’t willing to let go of some mean things she’d allegedly said about his staff—and in his own newspaper.
Broccoli was quoted by “friends” who told WSJ she’d called Amazon executives “f---ing idiots” in the Wall Street Journal in December, and THR reports that was the last straw for the billionaire, who told his underlings, “I don’t care what it costs, get rid of her.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Bezos, Broccoli, and her production company EON for comment.
The Amazon CEO was clearly not at all sentimental about the half-siblings’ shepherding of the Bond IP, though Broccoli and Wilson took over and closely ushered it back to success after their father’s death in 1996. Fans, crew members, and stars credit the siblings for 007’s reemergence as a box office juggernaut, particularly since reinvigorating the character by casting Daniel Craig as the seventh Bond.
As such, the siblings’ sale to Amazon shocked Hollywood and its fans, many of whom wrote off any chance of more quality Bond films after news of the shake up. Broccoli remained in the mix at Amazon, but her half-brother Wilson retired—leaving her “on her own,” THR reports, in a sea of executives whom she’d called “idiots.”
Amazon’s vision for 007 is also markedly different from the one the Broccoli and Wilson had held for decades, which spurned prequels and TV spinoffs and eschewed the Marvel-esque universe Amazon hoped to create with the characters.
With Broccoli out of the way, Amazon is free to do what it will, which already seems to be repelling top Hollywood talent from ever engaging with the franchise. Oscar-winning Conclave director Edward Berger told Variety that he was “100 percent” interested in directing for the franchise—until it was sold to Amazon. “Barbara Broccoli is no longer doing it and she is at the heart of this project, so I think it’s something different,” he said.
Osgood Perkins, the box office-topping director behind Longlegs and The Monkey, was less polite about any potential Bond-directing in his future during a recent Reddit Q&A. One user asked Perkins, “Are you open to directing a Bond movie/trilogy? If so, who would you cast as your version of Bond?”
“No,” he wrote in response, “because f--- Jeff Bezos.”
