Features

With MGM currently in talks to try and save the studio somehow many Bond fans are wondering why EON Productions needs MGM to make another bond film

James Bond producers Harry Saltzmann and Cubby Broccoli decided to change direction for the seventh movie in the series, Diamonds Are Forever.

With Sean Connery having already announced that he was leaving his role as James Bond, and with a new director, Peter Hunt, on board, it was clear that the sixth film in the Bond franchise was going to differ markedly from the previous efforts. John Barry, who had by this time won an Oscar for […]

In The Book of Bond, Kingsley Amis (writing as Lt-Col Bill Tanner after the Chief-of-Staff in Fleming’s novels) describes Bond’s library saying that it should be modest and that more extensive collections go with “serious criminal tendencies”. While Amis believed that Bond’s library was limited to a handful of books there is no evidence that […]

After the stunning commercial success of Thunderball, Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman initially turned to Ian Fleming’s novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service for the fifth instalment in the film franchise. However, problems with finding suitable locations for the book’s wintry setting led them to turn to Fleming’s twelfth novel, You Only Live Twice. With […]

We only have to wait until Ian Fleming’s second James Bond novel, Live And Let Die, to find 007 scuba diving, when Bond is on the tail Mr Big. Ian Fleming was fascinated by the underwater world and sea life, probably the reason it features prominently in two Bond novels. Fleming had met underwater pioneer […]

The success of the first three James Bond films in the early 1960s had led to a huge array of copycat spy thrillers. In an attempt to ensure the Bond franchise remained at the forefront of the action genre, Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman decided to make Thunderball, Fleming’s ninth James Bond book. With a […]

By the time the production started on the third James Bond film, the 007 character was a box office sensation. Dr No and From Russia With Love had catapulted the secret agent to the top of the box office charts the world over, the movie going public expectantly awaited the release of the third film […]

After the huge commercial success of the first Bond film, Dr No, producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli could not wait to get back on location to start the filming of the second instalment. Selecting Fleming’s fifth Bond novel, From Russia With Love (partly, it is said, as it was identified by President John F […]

At 7.35am on 14th January 1962, a tired and eclectic group of British artistes assembled at London Airport for a gruelling twenty-hour flight to Jamaica. Amongst them were film producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli, stuntmen, technicians and a talented young Scottish actor named Sean Connery. Also part of the group was a composer who […]