Hollywood history is full of near-misses, but few have produced consequences as seismic as this one. Long before Indiana Jones cracked his whip across cinema screens, Steven Spielberg had a far simpler dream: he wanted to direct a James Bond movie. What he got instead was rejection—twice—and a lesson that would reshape blockbuster filmmaking forever.
In the mid-to-late 1970s, Spielberg was already a phenomenon. Jaws had rewritten box-office logic, and audiences were lining up for his brand of suspense-driven spectacle. Riding that momentum, Spielberg approached Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli with a direct request: let me direct the next 007 film, The Spy Who Loved Me.
The answer was a firm no.
According to Spielberg, Broccoli felt he wasn’t the “right fit” for the Bond universe. The concern wasn’t talent—it was tone. Bond, in Broccoli’s view, required a specifically “British style,” and Spielberg, the brash American wunderkind, didn’t have it.
Undeterred, Spielberg tried again after Close Encounters of the Third Kind became another critical and commercial triumph. This time, the rejection cut deeper. He was told he was now too big—too expensive, too famous, too likely to disrupt the carefully controlled Bond machine.
In other words: you’re not good enough… and now you’re too good.
Frustrated, Spielberg escaped to Hawaii to clear his head and wait out the opening weekend of Star Wars. There, on a beach near Mauna Kea, he met up with his close friend George Lucas. While the two reportedly built an enormous sandcastle, Spielberg vented about his Bond frustrations.
“I’ve always wanted to direct a James Bond picture,” he admitted.
Lucas didn’t hesitate. “I’ve got something better than Bond.”
What Lucas pitched was a throwback adventure hero inspired by 1930s serials—a globe-trotting archaeologist named Indiana Smith. Spielberg loved the concept instantly, though he famously vetoed the name. “Indiana Jones,” he said, sounded right. More importantly, it sounded timeless.
What followed was not accidental success—it was calculated defiance. Indiana Jones became, in many ways, Spielberg’s answer to Bond: a charismatic action hero without the British constraints, the rigid franchise rules, or the producer oversight that had shut him out. Lucas once described Indy as “Bond without the gadgets,” trading Q-branch toys for grit, fists, and a bullwhip.
The Bond influence was never subtle. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom opens with Indy in a white tuxedo, a visual wink to Sean Connery’s iconic look in Goldfinger. And in a deliciously ironic twist, Spielberg later cast Connery himself as Henry Jones Sr. in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The message was clear: if he couldn’t direct Bond, he’d absorb Bond—and surpass him.
The Indiana Jones franchise went on to earn billions and define modern adventure cinema. Spielberg never asked to direct a Bond film again. Years later, he joked that the problem had solved itself.
“They can’t afford me now.”
Sometimes rejection doesn’t close a door.
Sometimes it creates a legend.