Danny Boyle won't take on Bond, almost directed Aliens 4, and loves The Clash

Danny Boyle won’t take on Bond, almost directed Aliens 4, and loves The Clash

March 15th 2013, 12:14pm

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Last night, 92YTribeca held a “Conversation with Danny Boyle.” IndieWire was there, and managed to get some good highlights from the event.

One of the first things brought to the table was whether Boyle would be interested in directing the next Bond film since Sam Mendes dropped out. Not only is it not for him, but he isn’t all about that big budget business. Don’t get it confused– he likes those kinds of movies– he just doesn’t want to make them:

No. I much prefer to have a ceiling. A ceiling that is limiting us and you try and break through. We want our films to look like $100 million dollars, that’s for sure. And we want them to sound like $200 million. But you try and do that with that cap on them. And that’s where the energy, belief and evangelical nature of the process comes from. I love watching those movies, I’m a big fan. Chris Nolan, Ridley Scott and they mustn’t stop making them, but they are not really the ones for me.”

He actually said a little more on the subject of Bond during an interview at SXSW:

It’s not for me, I’m afraid. Because of the Bond thing in the Olympics, I visited the [Skyfall] set a few times and saw Sam, Barbara Broccoli, Michael Wilson and Daniel Craig and everybody. They’re different kinds of films, you know? They’re huge. They’re just huge. They wouldn’t get the best out of me, doing that sort of thing.

Did you guys also know that Boyle once considered directing ALIENS 4?

“I got involved briefly, with ‘Alien 4.’ After ‘Trainspotting’ my head was turned. Partly because I loved the ‘Alien’ movies, but I realized very quickly that I couldn’t make one. You wouldn’t get the best out of me at all.”

Boyle is also a huge fan of The Clash. When asked by fans if there was ever a song that he’d tried to make work, but didn’t make the cut, Boyle said he had tried to stick The Clash’s “White Man in Hammersmith Palais” in about “10 films.” He said it was the “greatest song ever written.” But despite that, Boyle’s message during the conversation was to be open to the moments and letting the songs come to you.