Sam Mendes which began transmission in early 2013. In April 2016 he was named as the President of the Jury for the 73rd Venice International Film Festival. On 5 January 2010, news broke that Mendes was employed to direct the 23rd Eon Productions installment of the "James Bond" franchise. The film, "Skyfall", was subsequently released on 26 October 2012, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Bond films. Mendes had been employed as a consultant on the film when it was in pre-production, and had remained attached to the project during the financial troubles of MGM. The film was a major
Sam Mendes is from Trinidad, is a Roman Catholic of Portuguese Creole descent, and his mother is an English Jew. His grandfather was the Trinidadian writer Alfred Hubert Mendes. Mendes's parents divorced when he was a child. He grew up in Oxfordshire and attended Magdalen College School and Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he graduated with a first in English. While at Cambridge, he was a member of the Marlowe Society and directed several plays, including a production of "Cyrano de Bergerac" with Tom Hollander among the cast members. He was also a "brilliant" schoolboy cricketer, according to Wisden and played for Magdalen College