Prior to the Amazon MGM studios takeover, longtime James Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson had a stranglehold over the IP’s creative direction, which led to Steven Soderbergh’s pitch being rejected. Tony Gilroy, who partnered up with the Ocean’s Eleven filmmaker on their short-lived venture to realize their own Bond feature, recently broke his silence on the subject.

And given Gilroy’s description of their scrapped idea, had the movie been made, it could’ve tackled one of the franchise’s long-running problems: the villains.

Although Soderbergh did suggest at his failed attempts to get the idea moving, in a recent interview for The Rogue Ones podcast, Tony Gilroy confessed that he and Soderbergh brainstormed the prospect of a 007 movie set in the ’60s.

With a predicted budget of $30M, they aimed to take a 1960s-set black-and-white approach to the movie, and according to Gilroy, the antagonist he had in mind for the movie would’ve combated the series’ villain issue.

And then the other time—I don’t want to really talk about this—but I had a [good] villain,” he clarified. “The problem with the Bond [franchise] is that they can’t get a good villain that works. In my opinion, they haven’t had a villain that worked in a very, very long time. And that’s the whole problem, the rest of it takes care of itself.

Despite commencing on a great note with Mads Mikkelsen‘s Le Chiffre, the following entries in the Daniel Craig era witnessed a slump in the quality when it comes to the villains.

Given the wasted potential of Christoph Waltz’s Blofeld, Javier Bardem’s Silva, and Rami Malek‘s Safin, the Bond franchise has a long-running villain issue that has gone unaddressed.

Had Gilroy and Soderbergh’s pitch been realized, considering the Andor writer has a knack for nailing morally convoluted villainous figures, a Bond villain, set against the Cold War era tension, would’ve been nothing short of exquisite.

While most Bond fans can get behind the prospect of a 007 movie set in the Cold War era, Steven Soderbergh and Tony Gilroy‘s plan to make the movie black-and-white might’ve been a step too far. Although it’s entirely possible that the movie could’ve inked itself as one of the better entries in the franchise, the black-and-white approach wouldn’t have chime well with Bond’s big-screen appeal.

Since its inception on the big screen, James Bond has been a crowd puller, and the longtime Bond producers were adamant about preserving the character’s cinematic glory. While justifiable from an artistic standpoint, the black-and-white style would’ve alienated a sizeable portion of the general audience, which explains why Broccoli and Wilson didn’t commit to the pitch.

It’ll be interesting to see where the Bond IP movies go next, especially under the helm of Amazon and MGM Studios. Hopefully, the villain issue will be tackled in the new iteration of the cinematic icon.

Could a black-and-white Bond film have worked? Share your thoughts!