Daniel Craig resisted Android phone placement in "Spectre" because "James Bond only uses the best"

Posted:
in iPhone edited November 2015
Internal Sony communications indicated that "Spectre" star Daniel Craig and the movie's director Sam Mendes were both opposed to multimillion dollar product placements for Sony or Samsung Android phones because it could tarnish the suave image of James Bond.




The discussion was revealed last winter when the movie studio's emails were hacked, as noted today by Bond movie aficionado John Gruber of Daring Fireball after Financial Times writer Henry Mance discussed the role product placement plays in movies.

An earlier report by Matt Weinberger of Business Insider UK noted that Sony had initially offered Craig $5 million to carry around its Xperia Z4 phone in the movie.

Discussions involved an $18 million marketing commitment from Sony, escalating to a $50 million marketing and promotional package from Samsung as well as a $5 million product placement for Bond to be seen using an Android phone with Samsung's brand on it.

Leaked emails involving Bond franchise producer Barbara Broccoli noted that money wasn't the only consideration involved in the decision of whether to take money from Android phone makers in exchange for promotion. James Bond only uses the 'best,' and in their minds, the Sony phone is not the 'best'

"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 and Operations for Columbia Pictures.

Product placement in movies and TV has become a big business, and Bond films have long been a vehicle for associating some of the world's most luxurious brands with the super-spy character, from Aston Martin cars to Rolex watches. It's harder to picture James Bond using an Android phone, given both their cheap image and notoriety for suffering a litany security vulnerabilities such as Stagefright.

Apple has long offered free access to its products to a variety of movie and TV studios, resulting in decades of pictures and shows where virtually every model of Apple computer has made a big screen appearance of some sort.

While Nokia, Samsung and other commodity hardware licensees of Android or Windows have in recent years become notorious for the conspicuously prominent paid placement of their products, the return on investment from such deals does not appear to be very high.

Despite regular appearances in movies, Nokia and Sony have essentially vanished from the consumer market in the minds of most consumers, and Samsung's phone profits have imploded over the last two years despite billions spent on high profile marketing as Apple's iPhone expands its command as the most popular phone available.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 117
    prokipprokip Posts: 178member
    Now you see it now you don't.
  • Reply 2 of 117
    mcdavemcdave Posts: 1,927member
    Oh, what a gift for DED!

    And after the BMW/Sony debacle it's good to see bond back on track.
  • Reply 3 of 117
    Paragraph 8 vs 4 = 10
  • Reply 4 of 117

    That's awesome!

  • Reply 5 of 117
    fallenjtfallenjt Posts: 4,053member
    Imagythis: Bond stands next to his Aston Martin, checks time on his Rolex, and make a phone call from...ehh Samsung phone? Eww! That doesn't look right. I thought the phone should be Vertu.
  • Reply 6 of 117
    Brilliant, DED, brilliant. I couldn't stop chuckling.

    I particularly like part where Apple says to product placements (I am paraphrasing), "sure go ahead and use our stuff, we won't charge you for it."
  • Reply 7 of 117
    gtrgtr Posts: 3,231member
    Hey, if Apple is good enough for Gandalf the WISE then why not Bond?

    [IMG]http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/64874/width/400/height/800[/IMG]
  • Reply 8 of 117
    badmonkbadmonk Posts: 1,285member
    Once again DED, great article. Your writing keeps getting tighter & more succinct. Love it. Thanks Again! You are on a roll man.
  • Reply 9 of 117
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,382member
    This is something you don't see everyday. Impressive, not easy to turn down 50M to use a phone. Glad they stuck to some higher principles, like not wanting to tarnish the Bond image.
  • Reply 10 of 117
    What a load of crap. Creators of the movie resisted a Sony product, and nowhere in your story do you back up your claim of them liking ios over android.

    Read better ffs
  • Reply 11 of 117
    Say what? They used the Sony phone in the movie.
  • Reply 12 of 117

    Reminds me of the Rifftrax of Casino Royale.

     

    Kevin: And so the hotel has six Blu-ray drives for their security system?

    Mike: It’s a Bond film, Kevin. Anything Bond touches can’t cost less than 11,000 dollars.

    Kevin: Really? His shoes? That tie? His underpants?

    Mike: All high def. 11,000 bucks each.

     

    And then later, as Bond walks to the Aston Martin.

     

    Kevin: Ah, so that car is now worth 11,000 dollars, right?

    Mike: Ooh... probably a bit more than that.

  • Reply 13 of 117
    dasanman69dasanman69 Posts: 13,002member
    fallenjt wrote: »
    Imagythis: Bond stands next to his Aston Martin, checks time on his Rolex, and make a phone call from...ehh Samsung phone? Eww! That doesn't look right. I thought the phone should be Vertu.

    Bond wears an Omega.
  • Reply 14 of 117

    What is interesting and annoying to me is the mismatch of devices and the information they display in movies and on TV. For example, I've seen Macs running Windows, PCs running Mac OSs, both devices running fake programs, and everything in between. Regarding smartphones, Dallas (2012) had a mixture of mismatched smartphones and the sounds they make. You'd hear Apple ringtones coming from non-Apple devices and vice versa. Recently, there was an episode of The Middle showing what appears to be an HP laptop running OS X. Last season, there was another episode where Frankie was laying in bed using an old Windows laptop with a 4:3 aspect ratio screen, but the video overlay was a recent version of OS X. I guess the producers generally gather up any hardware they can find and use stock video overlays without regard to what is actually correct.

     

  • Reply 15 of 117
    Originally Posted by zroger73 View Post

    ...without regard to what is actually correct.

     


    image

    image

  • Reply 16 of 117
    larryjwlarryjw Posts: 1,031member
    No reason to choose any existing product. Any old prop phone will work especially if Bond has technology that no one has. Whatever it is, it's fake anyway.
  • Reply 17 of 117
    Originally Posted by LarryJW View Post

    Whatever it is, it's fake anyway.

     

    That reminds me of another line. Bond’s checking in on the location of the guy in the hotel.

     

    Mike: Sony Ericsson: Our Phones Can’t Actually Do This™

  • Reply 18 of 117
    Surely Q would be working with Jony Ive in getting Bond a prototype iPhone 7S?
  • Reply 19 of 117
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    reinthal wrote: »
    Surely Q would be working with Jony Ive in getting Bond a prototype iPhone 7S?

    Jony Ive is Q!
  • Reply 20 of 117
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    zroger73 wrote: »
    What is interesting and annoying to me is the mismatch of devices and the information they display in movies and on TV. For example, I've seen Macs running Windows, PCs running Mac OSs, both devices running fake programs, and everything in between. Regarding smartphones, Dallas (2012) had a mixture of mismatched smartphones and the sounds they make. You'd hear Apple ringtones coming from non-Apple devices and vice versa. Recently, there was an episode of The Middle showing what appears to be an HP laptop running OS X. Last season, there was another episode where Frankie was laying in bed using an old Windows laptop with a 4:3 aspect ratio screen, but the video overlay was a recent version of OS X. I guess the producers generally gather up any hardware they can find and use stock video overlays without regard to what is actually correct.

    <img alt="" class="lightbox-enabled" data-id="64877" data-type="61" src="http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/64877/width/350/height/700/flags/LL" style="; width: 350px; height: 263px">

    You are right. I'm sure you have noticed all the TV characters seem to type into their lap tops too, you rarely see a mouse used and they manage to do things while typing that are totally impossible by just typing. It is pretty funny .. but that's show biz.
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