Daniel Craig recounts the difficult making of Quantum of Solace

Screenwriters' strike, failed stunts and improvised scenes: Daniel Craig reveals behind the scenes of Quantum of Solace, for better and especially for worse.

Quantum of Solace, the “true-false sequence of Casino Royale“will return this Monday evening on France 3. This opus has since its release in 2008 marked people's minds with its apparent strangeness, making the film a sort of UFO with a difficult reputation.

This reputation, Quantum of Solace owes it to a complicated production, strewn with pitfalls, mentioned by Daniel Craig in the documentary Being James Bond broadcast on AppleTV in 2021, while Dying can wait was slowly approaching cinemas.

During this documentary, Craig recounts the evolution of the film, and the many difficulties he encountered, the feature film being caught up in the success of Casino Royale on the one hand, and the screenwriters' strike that shook Hollywood in 2007 on the other.

“We had a writers' strike. We had a script, it wasn't finished, but it was almost finished. The movie somehow works” explains Daniel Craig, then evoking the shadow of Casino Royale which hovered over the feature film. “It's not Casino Royaleand that's always been the case… It was literally like unsettling second album syndrome. Somehow we couldn't get past Casino (…). Of course we wanted to do better than Casino Royalebut, you know.”

Quantum of Solacescuttled by its predecessor in short, an irony for Bond who always manages to get out of trouble in his missions.

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This chaotic realization is also remembered, during the documentary, by Barbara Broccoli, the producer of Quantum:

“We started shooting without a script, which is never a good idea. But the script was turned in, and I remember the screenwriter who turned it in got his check, then took his sign and went to demonstrate in front of the studio. We were screwed, and we all had to scramble to make the story work, and it didn't work very well. But I watch the movie, and you know, it's still a good movie.”

Failed stunts by Daniel Craig, improvised scenes and script written during filming: so many elements which do not guarantee success. So much so that Marc Forster, the director, thought twice before starting: he said in 2016 during an interview with Collider having thought “Ok, maybe I should leave the project” faced with a script that was not finished and several other major productions stopped.

Finally, even if everything wasn't going well, Quantum of Solace was released in theaters, and it will return to television tonight. Here is its trailer:

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