10 Pitched Movies Hollywood Wasn't Ready For
6. Quentin Tarantino's Pierce Brosnan-Starring Casino Royale
Following the release of the execrable Die Another Day, Quentin Tarantino actually attempted to acquire the rights to Ian Fleming's novel Casino Royale, yet was beaten to the punch by 007 producers the Broccolis.
His idea was to set the movie in the 1960s and shoot it in black-and-white, with Pierce Brosnan reprising the role of Bond one last time in a standalone continuity, while Uma Thurman would play Vesper Lynd, who Bond would kill at the end of the movie for betraying him.
Tarantino even approached Brosnan about the idea at a hotel bar, and after sinking some drinks, Brosnan agreed to lobby for Tarantino's involvement.
Though the next Bond film was indeed a quasi-reboot version of Casino Royale, neither Tarantino, Brosnan nor Thurman weren't involved, with Daniel Craig being cast as 007, while Martin Campbell was hired as director.
In the years following Casino Royale's release, Tarantino has effectively taken credit for it revitalising the Bond franchise, claiming that Barbara Broccoli never would've optioned Fleming's novel had he not made such a fuss about trying to adapt it himself first.
While it's absolutely fair to say that Tarantino would've been an extremely radical choice to direct a Bond film, especially given the PG-13 content restriction, there's also no doubt he would've delivered the most singular entry in the entire series.
But coming off the back of the extraordinarily goofy Die Another Day, Tarantino's style and tone would've caused too much of a whiplash among fans, so Craig's gritty-but-not-too-gritty movie was the understandably safer approach.
With Tarantino set to wrap up his filmmaking career soon enough - allegedly, anyway - the window of opportunity for a Bond film has likely passed, even if with Broccoli offering Spectre to Nicolas Winding Refn and hiring Cary Fukunaga to helm the upcoming No Time to Die, she's clearly getting more comfortable with hiring left-field auteurs.