Sony’s Xperia Z4 (Z3+) wasn’t considered good enough to be used by Bond in his latest flick

[Peter Holden]

Daniel Craig can be seen in cinemas in his latest Bond flick, Spectre, and here we have some behind-the-scenes news regarding the product placement and marketing side of things. According to some leaked emails, it would appear that Sony initially wanted its Xperia Z4 (or should it rather be the Z3+ as it is known outside of Japan) to be James Bond’s choice of smartphone, a move that both Bond director Sam Mendes and actor Daniel Craig had reservations about.

This was despite Daniel Craig being offered $5 million to use the Xperia Z4 in the film.

“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”). Having said that, David said if Sony made a fair market offer, that Barbara, armed with a “solid” financial proposal would go to work on Sam and Daniel and get this pushed through creatively. He obviously can’t guarantee that result (and he said as much), but he seemed very genuine and forthright on our call.”
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Besides the actor and director both having issues with the Xperia Z4, believing that the ‘Sony phone was not the best‘, the producer, Barbara Broccoli, also wanted Sony to up its $18 million marketing budget for both promoting Spectre, in addition to higher payments for the film’s cast and crew’s use of the phones. The issue was further muddied by an offer from Samsung with a vastly higher marketing figure of $50 million along with a $5 million fee just for using its phones in the film. Imagine James Bond with a Galaxy Note 5, if you will, perhaps defending himself with the S Pen? Although that would be nigh on impossible seeing as the handset is still not available in the UK…But I digress.

The Samsung offer would appear to have been used simply to spur Sony into upping its own offering. As we all know, Sony announced its latest range of handsets in September, with the Xperia Z5 being used by Bond in Spectre. Either the Z5 is now being perceived as the ‘best phone‘ or Sony has upped its marketing budget and/or paid a higher fee for the handset to be used in the film.



Source: BusinessInsider (UK)


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