Last year, Daniel Craig said that he was done with the James Bond franchise, telling a Time Out London interviewer that he would rather break glass and slash his wrists than return to playing the iconic spy again.
MGM’s chief executive Gary Barber reportedly “hit the ceiling” when he read the story with Craig’s comments, and personally called him to tell him off for trashing his role in the lucrative franchise.
At around that time, rumours also surfaced that Craig, after turning down an offer close to $US 90 million to return, was subsequently offered $US 150 million to shoot two back-to-back films.
That would buy him approximately 2,894,915 of these commemorative Royal Doulton figurines of Jack the Bulldog from Skyfall. Believe me, I know, I checked it out.
While this most recent rumour has yet to be confirmed, and Craig himself has said nothing, sources say that Sony’s bosses are prepared to pay “a king’s ransom” to have him come back for two more films.
For what it’s worth, Craig now seems much more keen on the possibility, and in a recent appearance at the New Yorker Festival, he walked back his comments about slashing his wrists, saying he was just feeling a bit tired at the time:
“They say that shit sticks, and that definitely stuck. It was the day after filming [stopped on Spectre]. I’d been away from home for a year … Boo-hoo. It’s a good gig. I enjoy it.”
The actor, who is currently sporting platinum blonde hair for a role in Stephen Soderbergh‘s Lucky Logan, played it cool, insisting that there have been “no conversations” about the next Bond yet, but that he’ll happily return:
“As far as I’m concerned, I’ve got the best job in the world. I’ll keep doing it as long as I still get a kick out of it. If I were to stop doing it, I would miss it terribly.”
Money fixes everything.
Source: Daily Mail.
Photo: Ilya S Savenok / Getty.
