20 Things You Didn't Know About Die Another Day
6. James Bond Will Return
Composer, David Arnold started scoring Die Another Day by writing a new song for the titles sequence, even though his song for The World Is Not Enough (1999) had not performed well in the US.
Fascinated by the “James Bond Will Return” epithet that closes most of the Bond films, Arnold entitled the song “I Will Return” as a way of reassuring the audience that, even though Bond is suffering during Daniel Kleinman’s titles sequence (which, for the first time, continues the film’s plot), Double-0 Seven would eventually get out of his predicament.
However, halfway through the scoring process, he learned that Madonna was providing the main song, so he immediately ceased work on I Will Return. Nevertheless, he wove the melody behind the unfinished song into several sequences in the movie, most notably his cue “Peaceful Fountains of Desire”.
David Arnold has since revealed that he would gladly have incorporated an instrumental version of Madonna’s controversially-received song into his score, but the composing process was too far along when it became clear that she would be performing the title theme.