After directing the highest-grossing James Bond movie of all time, Skyfall, it wasn’t a surprise to see Sam Mendes back behind the camera for this year’s follow-up film, Spectre. But the Oscar-winning filmmaker says this one is likely to be his last adventure with the famous secret agent.
“I said no to the last one and then ended up doing it, and was pilloried by all my friends,” Mendes told BBC during a recent interview. “But I do think this is probably it.”
According to Mendes, directing a James Bond movie is such a tremendous undertaking that it requires everything else in life to be back-burnered for several years. After doing that for 2012’s Skyfall and then again with Spectre, the prospect of doing that for a third film, he explained, just isn’t very appealing.
“I don’t think I could go down that road again,” he added. “You do have to put everything else on hold.”
Mendes explained that the upcoming film was a significantly larger project than Skyfall, and required even more of a time and energy commitment than the previous film — which was itself a massive production. The new film has James Bond (Daniel Craig) tracking down a mysterious organization with roots in his own secret service agency that endanger the lives of everyone he holds dear.
“This is a bigger movie than Skyfall,” he said of Spectre. “It’s shot in more places – we were in Mexico City and Tangiers and northern Sahara and Rome and the Alps and London. It’s been an enormous undertaking.”
Along with casting doubt on his return for the follow-up to Spectre, Mendes also teased that an announcement regarding the theme song for the film is coming soon.
“I can say that the song’s been recorded and it’s fantastic and I’m very excited about it,” he said of the next iteration of the much-anticipated James Bond themes. “You won’t have to wait long.”
Along with Craig in his fourth turn as Agent 007, Spectre stars Ben Wishaw, Naomie Harris, Ralph Fiennes, Christoph Waltz, Monica Bellucci, David Bautista, Léa Seydoux, Stephanie Sigman, Andrew Scott, and Rory Kinnear. The screenplay for the film was penned by John Logan, Neal Purvis, and Robert Wade.
Spectre is scheduled to hit standard and IMAX theaters November 6, 2015.
