Sony offers $5 million to get Daniel Craig’s James Bond use their phone in ‘Spectre’
Sony’s leaked emails are still hitting the net and a massive $5 million offer to get Daniel Craig to use one of their phones in the upcoming film Spectre is not making the company look good in any way.
“BEYOND the $$ factor, there is, as you may know, a CREATIVE factor whereby Sam and Daniel don’t like the Sony phone for the film (the thinking, subjectively/objectively is that James Bond only uses the ‘best,’ and in their minds, the Sony phone is not the ‘best’),”wrote Andrew Gumpert, president of Worldwide Business Affairs & Operations at Columbia Pictures, in the email.
In fact, there are a couple of emails leaked by Julian Assange’s Wikileaks.
“Having said that, David said if Sony made a fair market offer, that Barbara, armed with a ‘solid’ financial proposal would go to work on Sam and Daniel and get this pushed through creatively. He obviously can’t guarantee that result (and he said as much), but he seemed very genuine and forthright on our call.”
“Sam” referred to is director Sam Mendes and the “Barbara” is Bond series producer Barbara Broccoli.
The email was written in response to the one sent to Gumpert by George Leon, Sony’s EVP of consumer marketing, regarding product placement in the film. The interesting takeaway in the Leon email was that Leon suggested not giving Craig the $5 million fee as stipulated:
“What if we take the Daniel Craig fee and convince Sony just to pay Barbara directly 4MM for a placement fee. NO Daniel this time. We walk from him. The remaining 1MM (or LESS!) of this budget can be used to hire ‘Q’ instead? Her fee would have to include the right for Sony to use the 007 marks including the barrel, but no Daniel.”
We’re pretty sure James Bond would not be happy to read that. Craig, however, may have had an inkling regarding the product placement discussion since emails regarding the Sony phone were reported in late 2014. That report did not note Craig’s clear disdain for the Sony smartphone as a Bond device.
Spectre arrives in theaters on November 6, 2015.
LOl but he rejected $5 million deal and rejected Sony Product Placement saying that it isn’t enough cool for 007 after using the similar brand phone in Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall. Daniel left all us Shaken and stirred