Pre-production In March 2013, Mendes said he would not return to direct the next film in the series, then known as
Bond 24, but later recanted and announced that he would return, as he found the script and the plans for the long-term future of the franchise appealing.
Nicolas Winding Refn would later reveal that he turned down an offer to direct the film. In directing
Skyfall and
Spectre, Mendes became the first director to oversee two successive
Bond films since
John Glen directed five consecutive films, ending with
Licence to Kill in 1989. In July 2015 Mendes noted that the combined crew of
Spectre numbered over one thousand, making it a larger production than
Skyfall. Craig is listed as co-producer. He considered the credit a high point of his career, saying, "I'm just so proud of the fact that my name comes up somewhere else on the titles." The film's use of the
SPECTRE organisation and its characters marked the end of
long-standing litigation between
Eon Productions and producer
Kevin McClory, who sued James Bond creator
Ian Fleming in 1961 claiming ownership over elements of the novel
Thunderball, and in an out of court settlement two years later, was awarded the novel's film rights, including Spectre and its characters. McClory died in 2006, and in November 2013, MGM and the McClory estate formally settled the issue with
Danjaq, sister company of Eon Productions—with MGM acquiring the full copyright film rights to the concept of Spectre and all of the characters associated with it. It has been suggested that with the acquisition of the film rights and the organisation's re-introduction to the series' continuity, the SPECTRE acronym was discarded and the organisation reimagined as "Spectre". When
Sony Pictures renegotiated with
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer the deal to cofinance the
Bond franchise in 2011, they were tasked to provide 25% of the
negative cost of both
Skyfall and
Spectre, in exchange for receiving 25% of the profits plus distribution fees for overseeing its worldwide rollout. When the film was announced in June 2013, the budget was not yet fixed, but was certain to be higher than the $210 million of
Skyfall due to foreign locations and bigger payments for Mendes and Craig. In November 2014, Sony was
targeted by hackers who released details of confidential e-mails between Sony executives regarding several high-profile film projects. Included within these were several memos relating to the production of
Spectre, claiming that the film was over budget, detailing early drafts of the script written by
John Logan, and expressing Sony's frustration with the project. Eon Productions later issued a statement confirming the leak of what they called "an early version of the screenplay". Eon resisted Sony and MGM's arguments to cut down on stunts and location work to reduce the budget but managed to secure tax incentives and rebates, such as $14 million from Mexico.
Spectre has a final budget estimated between $250 million and $275 million.
Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who had done work in five previous
Bond films; and British playwright
Jez Butterworth, who had previously made uncredited contributions to
Skyfall. Butterworth was brought in to polish the script, being helped by Mendes and Craig. Butterworth considered that his changes involved adding what he would like to see as a teenager, and limited the scenes with Bond talking to men, as "Bond shoots other men—he doesn't sit around chatting to them. So you put a line through that." With the acquisition of the rights to Spectre and its associated characters, Purvis and Wade revealed that the film would provide a minor
retcon to the continuity of the previous films, with the Quantum organisation alluded to in
Casino Royale and introduced in
Quantum of Solace reimagined as a division within Spectre rather than an independent organisation which is implied to be no longer active by the film's events. The plot of
Spectre also linked the events of
Skyfall to Craig's first two
Bond movies by revealing antagonist Raoul Silva to be associated with Spectre reverting
Skyfalls initial solo story status. Various plot ideas were discussed and discarded during the writing process. For example,
Ralph Fiennes revealed in a 2021 podcast interview that at one stage Sam Mendes suggested a plot twist revealing M to be the villain, which Fiennes vetoed. Another draft by Logan had MI6 chief of staff Bill Tanner uncovered as a Spectre mole. Despite being an original story,
Spectre draws on
Ian Fleming's
source material, most notably in the character of Franz Oberhauser, played by
Christoph Waltz, and his father Hannes. Hannes Oberhauser is a background character in the short story "
Octopussy" from the
Octopussy and The Living Daylights collection, and is named in the film as having been a temporary
legal guardian of a young Bond in 1983. As Mendes searched for events in young Bond's life to follow the childhood discussed in
Skyfall, he came across Hannes Oberhauser, who becomes a
father figure to Bond. From there, Mendes conceived the idea of "a natural child who had been
pushed out, cuckoo in the nest" by Bond, which became Franz. Similarly, Charmian Bond is shown to have been his full-time guardian, observing the back story established by Fleming. Christoph Waltz was cast in the role of Franz Oberhauser, though he refused to comment on the nature of the part. It was later revealed with the film's release that he is Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Waltz got interested in the film for dealing with technology-assisted
mass surveillance, "speaking about relevant social issues in a way that few
Bonds have done before", and denied rumours that the role was written specially for him, but added that "when I came on board, the role grew, evolved, and mutated."
Dave Bautista was cast as Mr Hinx after producers sought an actor with a background in contact sports. The character only has one line in the entire film, "Shit". Sam Mendes thought the silent nature would drive Bautista away, but the lifelong Bond fan expressed interest in reviving the quiet henchman archetype of characters such as
Jaws, and
Oddjob from
Goldfinger. Bautista said not talking created an acting challenge, "trying to find this way where I am actually going to have to speak without speaking." After casting
Bérénice Marlohe, a relative newcomer, as Sévérine in
Skyfall, Mendes sought out a more experienced actor for the role of Madeleine Swann, ultimately casting
Léa Seydoux in the role.
Monica Bellucci joined the cast as Lucia Sciarra, becoming, at the age of fifty, the oldest actress to be cast as a
Bond girl. She had previously auditioned for the role of Paris Carver in
Tomorrow Never Dies, but was passed over in favour of
Teri Hatcher. In a separate interview with Danish website Euroman,
Jesper Christensen revealed he would be reprising his role as Mr White from
Casino Royale and
Quantum of Solace. In addition to the principal cast, Alessandro Cremona was cast as Marco Sciarra,
Stephanie Sigman was cast as Estrella, and
Detlef Bothe was cast as a villain for scenes shot in Austria. In February 2015 over 1,500 background artistes were hired for the pre-title sequence set in Mexico, though they were replicated in the film, giving the effect of around 10,000 extras.
Filming Mendes revealed that production would begin on 8 December 2014 at Pinewood Studios, with filming taking seven months. Mendes also confirmed several filming locations, including
London,
Mexico City and
Rome. Van Hoytema shot the film mostly on
Kodak 35mm film stock (in addition to digital cameras such as the
6K Arri Alexa 65mm), in contrast to
Skyfall being filmed solely on digital cameras. Early filming took place at Pinewood Studios, and around
London, with scenes variously featuring Craig and Harris at Bond's flat, and Craig and Kinnear travelling down the
River Thames. Filming was carried out in Austria between December 2014 and February 2015, with production taking place in the area around
Sölden—including the
Ötztal Glacier Road,
Rettenbach glacier and the adjacent ski resort plus cable car station—
Obertilliach and
Lake Altaussee. Scenes filmed in Austria centred on the Ice Q Restaurant, standing in for the fictional Hoffler Klinik, a private medical clinic in the
Austrian Alps. Filming included an action scene featuring a
Land Rover Defender Bigfoot and a
Range Rover Sport. Various aeroplane models were used in filming, from a life-sized plane with detachable wings to film the crash in the woods, to plane fuselages either built atop
snowmobiles or shot from nitrogen cannons. and later by an accident involving a filming vehicle that saw three crew members injured, at least one of them seriously. Filming temporarily returned to England to shoot scenes at
Blenheim Palace in
Oxfordshire, which stood in for a location in Rome, before moving on to the city itself for a five-week shoot across the city, with locations including the
Ponte Sisto bridge and the
Roman Forum. The production faced opposition from a variety of special interest groups and city authorities, who were concerned about the potential for damage to historical sites around the city, and problems with graffiti and rubbish appearing in the film. Special effects supervisor
Chris Corbould stated the scenes had to be extensively planned prior to filming specially to avoid any mishaps, going to the point of building protection above steps where cars would drive. featured an
Aston Martin DB10 (a model developed especially for the film, with only 10 examples produced) and a
Jaguar C-X75. The version used for filming was converted to use a conventional
internal combustion engine, to minimise the potential for disruption from mechanical problems with the complex hybrid system. The C-X75s used for filming were developed by the engineering division of Formula One racing team
Williams, who built the original C-X75 prototype for Jaguar. Remote driving pods were built above the cars so the vehicles could be driven while the cameras focused on Craig and Bautista at the steering wheel. With filming completed in Rome, production moved to
Mexico City in late March to shoot the film's opening sequence. Scenes for the
Day of the Dead festival filmed in and around the
Zócalo and the
Centro Histórico district, including at the
Gran Hotel Ciudad de México. At the time, no such Day of the Dead parade like the one from the film took place in Mexico City; in 2016, due to the interest raised by
Spectre and the government's desire to promote the
pre-Hispanic Mexican culture, the federal and local authorities decided to organise an actual "Día de Muertos" parade through
Paseo de la Reforma and
Centro Histórico on 29 October 2016, which was attended by 250,000 people. The film opens with a
long take that joins six shots seamlessly, and was one of the few scenes that required
previsualisation. Through extensive planning, filming did not require
motion control cameras. The
scene joints were done in post-production through re-timing and re-
projections, which even matched Mexico locations with interiors filmed at Pinewood. parade The planned scenes required the city square to be closed for filming a sequence involving a fight aboard a
Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm Bo 105CBS helicopter flown by stunt pilot
Chuck Aaron, which called for modifications to be made to several buildings to prevent damage. This particular scene in Mexico required 1,500 extras, 10 giant skeletons and 250,000 paper flowers. Reports in the Mexican media added that the film's second unit would move to
Palenque in the state of
Chiapas, to film aerial manoeuvres considered too dangerous to shoot in an urban area. These were pasted over a computer-generated square and crowd below the helicopter, with
motion capture doubles fighting inside. Mendes and the effects team felt that this approach "would get believable composition and movement" compared to adding a digital helicopter above the Mexico City location. Following filming in Mexico, and during a scheduled break, Craig was flown to New York to undergo minor surgery to fix his knee injury. It was reported that filming was not affected and he had returned to filming at Pinewood Studios as planned on 22 April. Nonetheless, some parts of the Mexico scene were done with stunt doubles, whose faces were digitally replaced with Craig's. The crew returned to the river less than a week later to film scenes solely set on Westminster Bridge. The
London Fire Brigade was on set to simulate rain as well as monitor smoke used for filming. Craig, Seydoux, and Waltz, as well as Harris and Fiennes, were seen being filmed. Prior to this, scenes involving Fiennes were shot at a restaurant in
Covent Garden. Blofeld's helicopter crash was done with two full sized helicopter shells, which were rigged with steelwork and an overhead track. Computer-generated rotor blades and scenery damage were added in post-production. The
MI6 building, which in the film is vacated and scheduled for demolition following the terrorist attack from
Skyfall, was replaced in the production plates for a digital reconstruction. When the building is detonated, it is a combination of both a miniature and a breakaway version of the digital building. The headquarters of Spectre in Morocco was located in
Gara Medouar which is a 'crater' caused by erosion and of neither volcanic nor impact origin. An explosion filmed in Morocco holds a
Guinness World Record for the largest film stunt explosion in cinematic history, involving 8,140 litres of kerosene and 24 charges each with a kilogramme of high explosives. (However,
Michael Bay challenged this record, asserting that, in fact, his film
Pearl Harbor featured a larger explosion.) The outside shots of a train in a desert featured the
Oriental Desert Express.
Principal photography concluded on 5 July 2015. A wrap-up party for
Spectre was held in commemoration before entering post-production. Filming took 128 days. While filming in Mexico City, speculation in the media claimed that the script had been altered to accommodate the demands of Mexican authorities—reportedly influencing details of the scene and characters, casting choices, and modifying the script to portray the country in a "positive light"—to secure tax concessions and financial support worth up to $20 million for the film. This was denied by producer Michael G. Wilson, Production of
Skyfall had previously faced similar problems while attempting to secure permits to shoot the film's pre-title sequence in India before moving to Istanbul. Five companies did the
visual effects—
Industrial Light & Magic,
Double Negative,
Moving Picture Company,
Cinesite and Peerless—under the supervision of Steve Begg. The computer-generated effects included
set extensions, digital touches on the vehicles, and crumbling buildings.
Soundtrack Thomas Newman returned as
Spectres composer. Mendes said the film would have more than 100 minutes of music. The English band
Radiohead were commissioned to write the title song, and submitted "
Man of War", an unreleased song written in the 1990s. It was rejected as it had not been written for the film and so was ineligible for the
Academy Award for Best Original Song. At the 2024
Ivor Novello Awards,
Lana Del Rey told
BBC News that she wrote her song "
24" for
Spectre, but it had been rejected. In September 2015, Eon announced that
Sam Smith had recorded the title theme, "
Writing's on the Wall". Smith reported writing the song in a single session with regular collaborator
Jimmy Napes in under half an hour before recording a
demo. Satisfied with the quality, the filmmakers used the demo in the final release. "Writing's on the Wall" was released as a download on 25 September 2015. It received mixed reviews from critics and fans, particularly in comparison to
Adele's "
Skyfall", leading to
Shirley Bassey trending on
Twitter on the day it was released. Despite the mixed reception, it became the first Bond theme to reach number one in the
UK Singles Chart, the second to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song, and the fifth to be nominated. It also won the
Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song at the
73rd Golden Globe Awards. ==Marketing==