Sony offered Daniel Craig $5 million to use their smartphone in the next James Bond movie, but he resisted
This is all according to internal Sony emails revealed via last winter's hack, dated to October of 2014.
It appears from the first email that long-time producer Barbara Broccoli, the daughter of James Bond movie series creator Albert Broccoli, wanted Sony to bolster its $18 million commitment to marketing Spectre with payments to the cast and crew for using its phones.
There appears to have been some back-and-forth, per a second email, with Samsung making a product placement offer of its own: Samsung was willing to give a $5 million fee for its phones appearing in the movie, but a higher marketing spend of $50 million to promote it.
Craig and Mendes had concerns other than cash, it seems from that second email.
"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.
Barring any further emails, we may have to wait until the release of Spectre on November 6 to see which phone Bond thinks is best.