Roger Deakins Won’t Be Returning To Shoot The Next James Bond Film

I don’t know about any of you, but one of my absolute favorite parts of the last James Bond film Skyfall was the cinematography of Roger Deakins. Arguably the most talented director of photography in the business, Deakins is an absolute master and rightly was nominated for an Oscar for his work on that movie

. That was his tenth Academy Award nomination at the time, and he’s since added another one this year for Prisoners. Sadly, he still hasn’t won, though it’s possible that he could pull an upset and finally score a win next month (don’t count on it though). Still, the job he did on Skyfall with director Sam Mendes was stunning, so I was looking forward to seeing them team up again on the sequel/next installment of the franchise. Alas, it appears like that won’t be happening.

Yes, reports have come out today stating that Deakins won’t be joining Mendes on the movie, most likely due to scheduling conflicts. He’s obviously one of the most in demand cinematographers in the business, so it stands to reason that the allure of something new trumped coming back to shoot a sequel. It obviously puts a bit of a damper on the Skyfall sequel, but with Deakins likely going to be teaming up with his longtime collaborators Joel and Ethan Coen again soon (though there’s nothing official about a new project for them right now), there’s a potential bright side to this news at least.

If you’re looking for when Deakins could finally win his long deserved Oscar, it could be next year for his work on the Angelina Jolie-directed World War II flick Unbroken, which could have some amazing visual components. That’s clearly putting the cart before the horse though, so I’ll steer clear of that for now, but keep that possibility in the back of your minds.

Regardless, this is our first Bond related news in a while, so that’s something, though it’s not exactly the most ideal news. We’ll all be there no matter who shoots the picture though, so it’s not exactly a deal breaker or anything of the sort. The technical prowess of Skyfall just spoiled us is all…