Why Steven Spielberg Was Rejected From Directing A James Bond Movie

After accepting meeting Mr. Bond wasn’t going to happen, Steven Spielberg took an alternative method to telling his own adventure series — with a brand-new hero, swapping an Aston Martin and a Walther PPK for a fedora and a whip. In an interview with the Daily Mail, he explained that when it came to his battle for Bond, «I’ve never asked again. Instead, I made the Indiana Jones series.»

It turned out all right as well. Swapping spies for snakes («Why did it have to be snakes?»), the entire Indiana Jones timeline is riddled with homages to 007 — from Indy wearing the same dinner suit combo as Sean Connery did in «Goldfinger» to having the man himself play Dr. Henry Jones, the father of our hat-wearing-hero, in «Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.» The film is considered a close runner-up to «Raiders of the Lost Ark,» which is deemed the absolute best Indiana Jones movie, according to fans. 

Years later, it was revealed that Spielberg couldn’t help himself. During Connery’s AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony, Spielberg explained that he picked Connery for Indy’s pop for a reason. «When George Lucas and I created the Indiana Jones series, it’s no secret that Bond movies were somewhere on our minds,» he confessed. «So when we had to cast Indiana Jones’ dad, I thought, who could possibly be more adventurous and daring and dangerous and charming and more wily and wonderful than Indiana Jones? Well, James Bond, of course.»