Daily Inspiration Quote by Jan de Bont

Jan de Bont is doing two kinds of PR at once: auditioning his taste and defending his timing. The first sentence is a small, elegant flex. He positions himself as someone who clocked Tomb Raider early, before it was just another IP play, and he frames that interest as directorial desire, not fanboy hunger. Its subtext is industry credibility: I saw the potential, I belonged in the conversation.

Then comes the pivot that reveals the power dynamics. “When I was approached for the second film” is passive construction doing active work. It quietly admits he didn’t land (or wasn’t offered) the first one, without saying why. Was it scheduling, politics, the studio’s preference for a different sensibility? He doesn’t litigate it; he sidesteps. That’s the seasoned director’s move: never narrate rejection, narrate opportunity.

“Delighted” is a calibrated word, warm but not gushing. It signals professionalism in a franchise context where directors are often treated as interchangeable technicians. De Bont, coming off high-concept, big-engine spectacle (Speed, Twister), is also reassuring the market: I can deliver scale, momentum, and clean action grammar - exactly what a sequel is supposed to amplify.

The context is early-2000s Hollywood, when video game adaptations were still culturally suspect but financially tempting, and sequels were increasingly managed as risk-adjusted products. His statement works because it’s both modest and strategic: it casts him as a willing collaborator while quietly insisting he was always the right kind of auteur-for-hire for this machine.