007: Sam Mendes is Back?

After the rousing critical and box office success of Skyfall, the most recent outing of the British Superspy, James Bond, director Sam Mendes said he wasn’t coming back to the franchise, instead focusing on some theatre projects.

Producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli set out on a search to find another director coming up in choices that ranged from uninspired (Christopher Nolan) to unique (Ang Lee) and all points in between.

According to Deadline, though, after their search came up empty, Broccoli and Wilson came back to Mendes and offered to wait for him to work through his theatre commitments. Sure, that means it won’t be until next year that we see this new film going into production, but it’ll have a stellar director who knows how to deliver a great James Bond film behind it.

Deadline is reporting this as fact, many other sites are reporting it as a possibility. No official announcements have been made and we’ve been unable to verify the reports on our own. So, take that as you will.

Personally, I think Bond was very good for Mendes and took away the crutches of his filmmaking that didn’t work for me and allowed him to flourish. I hope he’s able to repeat the performance and quality of Skyfall.