Mexican officials reportedly offered up to $20m in tax incentives to Sony Pictures and MGM in return for changes to be made to the next James Bond film, in an apparent attempt to combat the country’s negative image.

According to a report on the US website Tax Analysts, Mexico offered incentives in exchange for changes to to the script of Spectre, including a request for a Mexican Bond girl and a non-Mexican villain.

Shooting for the latest instalment of the Bond franchise, to be directed by Sam Mendes, is due to begin next week.

The report, based on internal Sony emails that were posted online by hackers purportedly linked to North Korea, said that studio executives from Sony Pictures Entertainment and MGM pressured for changes to the script to secure the incentives.

“You have done a great job in getting us the Mexican incentive,” wrote Jonathan Glickman, president of MGM’s motion picture group, in an email to the film’s producers. “Let’s continue to pursue whatever avenues we have available to maximize this incentive.”



Mexico’s requests for changes to the film script went much further than the conditions governments typically attach to filming deals, Tax Analysts reported.



The studio apparently allowed Mexican authorities to “make casting decisions, dictate characters’ ethnicities, and even change the occupation of an unnamed character that never appears on-screen or figures into the story outside of the opening scene”, the website reported.

The film’s original script reportedly included an assassin named Sciarra with his sights on the mayor of Mexico City. Officials insisted that Sciarra “cannot be Mexican” and preferred that his target be an international leader.

The Mexicans also reportedly demanded a Bond girl role for “a known Mexican actress”. This part of the deal, at least, appears to have been secured with the announcement last week that Stephanie Sigman had been cast in the movie.

Sigman, ironically, made her name in the critically acclaimed low-budget Mexican film Miss Bala, in which she plays a poverty-stricken beauty tossed around the underworld of drug violence facilitated by police corruption.

At the presentation of the film in Toronto, director Gerardo Naranjo called it “the story of a crumbling country”.

Mexican officials appeared eager to avoid any hint of such a negative portrayal of their country: in his email to the producer, Glickman said that highlighting Mexico City’s “modern aspects” could help the producers obtain an extra $6m of tax breaks.

In another email, former head of Sony Pictures Amy Pascal suggested that travel footage could help the producers secure additional funding. “We should insist they add whatever travelogue footage we need in Mexico to get the extra money,” she wrote.

The emails also suggest Mexican officials wanted to replace a cage fight with a chase through Mexico’s famed Day of the Dead celebrations, as well as include impressive aerial shots of the capital’s skyline when Bond steals Sciarra’s helicopter.

Although the Mexican institutions involved have not been revealed, the attempt to massage the country’s image fits into a wider context of determined efforts by the authorities to play down the country’s security crisis, after a decade of drug-fuelled violence that has killed about 100,000 people.

President Enrique Peña Nieto was elected in 2012 with the help of a slick publicity campaign that made much of his telenovela good looks and telenovela star wife. His first 18 months in office were marked by a public relations crusade aimed at convincing the world that the country’s long-running security crisis was a minor problem, trumped by his modernising economic vision.

Today that image has been badly tarnished by emblematic atrocities that cannot be ignored, such as the disappearance of 43 students in September after they were attacked by police in league with a drug cartel.