Meanwhile, as the franchise sputtered and stalled, Wilson, nearly 20 years older than Broccoli, decided to retire, leaving Barbara on her own with the Amazonians. The half-siblings (their mother was Dana Natol, Cubby’s second wife) couldn’t be more different. She’s liberal, he’s conservative; her passion is storytelling, he’s more into production engineering. But they had complementary skill sets. And they had absolute trust and faith in each other. “They didn’t always agree,” says a source. “But they had a way of working through to a resolution that they would both stand by. They never tried to do an end run around each other. They were always in it together.”
Wilson’s departure was said to be a big factor in Broccoli’s ultimate decision to walk away from the franchise. After 30 years of Bond movies, she no longer had the stomach or stamina for the endless studio battles or the years-long Bond production marathons, certainly not on her own. And there was no obvious successor — not even Wilson’s son, Greg, who’s been working on the recent films but who, insiders say, wasn’t considered ready to step into his father’s shoes.
In any case, it all came to a head in December, a month after Broccoli and Wilson picked up the Thalberg at the Governors Awards. That’s when The Wall Street Journal published a piece detailing the chilly state of affairs between Amazon and the Broccolis in which Barbara is quoted as telling friends that Amazon executives were “fucking idiots.” Not surprisingly, those choice words did not go over well with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. “He read her quote in the Journal and got on the phone and said, ‘I don’t care what it costs, get rid of her,’ ” is how one insider describes what happened, confirming that what Bezos ended up paying for the franchise was close to a billion dollars.
For that kind of money, Broccoli and Wilson must have decided, other people can screw it up all they want.
www.gq.com
