The only producer who rejected Steven Spielberg twice: “Now they can’t afford me”
In life, some things are unavoidable—rejection is one of them. No matter who you are, from the most powerful person on earth to someone on the lowest rung of the ladder, you’ll face rejection at some point. In a way, it’s comforting to know that even the most successful people still get turned down. It truly doesn’t matter who you are.
Take Steven Spielberg, for example. You’d be hard-pressed to find a safer bet in Hollywood—yet one producer denied him the chance to work on arguably the most famous franchise in the world. Twice.
In 1975, Jaws was released, and Hollywood moviemaking changed forever. Spielberg’s razor-sharp shark thriller gave birth to the summer blockbuster as we know it and gave its young director the first hit of a career that was about to go stratospheric. At that point, Spielberg had only directed three films, but Jaws was such a game changer that he felt confident about shooting his shot to make the movie he’d always dreamed of.
“I called Cubby Broccoli twice, and after Jaws, which was such a huge success, I thought, ‘Hey, people are giving me final cut now,'” Spielberg told BBC Radio 2. “So, I called up Cubby and offered my services, but he didn’t think I was right for the part.”
Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli was, of course, the famed producer with the keys to one of Hollywood’s most enduring kingdoms: James Bond. Throughout his career, though, the Broccoli family has always been extremely circumspect with who they hire to helm the adventures of the globetrotting superspy. For one thing, the idea of an American directing the quintessentially British franchise never seemed to be something Cubby was interested in, so perhaps that was why he effectively told Spielberg, “No dice, kid.”
Spielberg admitted he made one more play for Bond after Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which was also a massive hit in 1977, but he was turned down yet again. He joked that, after this rejection, even if the Broccoli family did come back to him with an offer, he’d say, “They can’t afford me”. However, it was obvious that failing to get his hands on Bond was a disappointment for a guy not used to hearing “no”. There would be a happy ending for Spielberg, though: it’s gone down in Hollywood legend that he was able to scratch his Bond itch by making Raiders of the Lost Ark with his old buddy George Lucas.
The two Bond movies from that period that seem likely to be the ones Spielberg attempted to get hired on are 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me and 1979’s Moonraker, although there is an interesting wrinkle to the story. These were the third and fourth entries in Roger Moore’s tenure, and he has a different memory of when Spielberg approached the franchise – and why Broccoli rejected him.
In his memoir One Lucky Bastard, Moore recalls bumping into Spielberg in the early ’70s at the Plaza Anténé In Paris. At this point, Moore was insistent that Spielberg had only directed the TV movie Duel – which he rated “a superb bit of moviemaking” – but that he wasn’t a known entity in Hollywood yet. “We sat and we talked,” Moore wrote. “He said he would love to direct a Bond.”
In this version of events, Moore passed on Spielberg’s interest to Broccoli, who torpedoed the young hopeful’s dreams. However, if Moore is to be believed, he didn’t do it because Spielberg was American or even because he was inexperienced. “Spielberg wanted a piece, and Cubby didn’t want to give anything away,” Moore claimed. “He didn’t want to give any more points of Bond away to directors coming in.”
