Daniel Craig is currently making the press rounds for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo so it's only natural that people want to talk about the next James Bond film, Skyfall.  But in a recent interview, Craig explained why the script for Casino Royale is what brought him to the franchise and then how the writer's strike is what caused Quantum of Solace to be so terrible.

Hit the jump for more including what Craig says he finds encouraging about Skyfall, which opens November 9, 2012.

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In his recent interview with Time Out [via The Playlist], Craig explains what happened with Quantum of Solace:

Time Out: It seems that the script is sometimes an after-thought on huge productions.

Craig: ‘Yes and you swear that you’ll never get involved with shit like that, and it happens. On “Quantum”, we were fucked. We had the bare bones of a script and then there was a writers’ strike and there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t employ a writer to finish it. I say to myself, “Never again”, but who knows? There was me trying to rewrite scenes – and a writer I am not.’

Time Out: You had to rewrite scenes yourself?

Craig: ‘Me and the director [Marc Forster] were the ones allowed to do it. The rules were that you couldn’t employ anyone as a writer, but the actor and director could work on scenes together. We were stuffed. We got away with it, but only just. It was never meant to be as much of a sequel as it was, but it ended up being a sequel, starting where the last one finished.’

I guess the solution was: "Do more chase scenes."  I guess at no point did Foster pipe up and say, "Yeah, I'm not really good at shooting those."

Craig says he was grateful that the movie turned out to be a commercial success, but he wasn't as happy with the final product as he would have liked to be.  However, with Skyfall, he seems more excited, especially since he had more say in choosing the director. He explains why he chose Sam Mendes (American Beauty) for the gig:

He’s English, he’s Cambridge-educated, he’s smart. He’s lived with Bond all his life, he grew up with Bond the way I did. We grew up at exactly the same time, and I said to him, “We have to do this together, we have exactly the same reference points, we both like the same Bond movies and we both like the same bits in the same Bond movies we like.” We sat down and we just rabbited for hours about “Live and Let Die” or “From Russia with Love”, and talked about little scenes that we knew from them. That’s how we started talking about it. That’s what we tried to instill in the script. He’s been working his arse off to tie all these things together so they make sense – in a Bond way.’

Craig is also enthused that they've got cinematographer Roger Deakins on board (as well he should be).  Hopefully with more lead time, more talent behind the camera, and certainly even more talent in front of it (Craig co-stars with Javier Bardem, Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Naomie Harris, and Ben Whishaw), Skyfall will be another great Bond movie.