Bond. Litigious Bond

Yesterday, I talked about how George Lazenby got his lucky break and a chance to be James Bond.  But there's also an interesting story that I didn't know about Sean Connery, or more importantly, why Connery came back in 1983 to do Never Say Never Again.

You see, Dear Reader, back in the beginning, Ian Fleming had a friend by the name of Kevin McClory.  McClory and Fleming (and a few others) would all kick around story ideas, and write screenplay treatments for Fleming's new sensational literary hero.  One of these became the script for Thunderball.

However, both Fleming and McClory ultimately claimed rights to the screenplay, and it was promptly embroiled in a long series of legal rights battles (it was originally going to be the first film).  The courts eventually decided in McClory's favor, and he was all set to use it to launch a competing Bond franchise (can you imagine?), so the producers at Eon (Broccoli et al.) cut a deal-- McClory would get sole producer credit (and presumably gobs of money) for Thunderball if they could make it as part of the main franchise with Connery and the gang.

McClory continued to have dreams of parlaying Thunderball's success (it remains the best earning Bond film after adjustment for inflation) into his own Bond Empire, but he was unable to acquire the rights to any of the other properties from Fleming, leaving him with just the one film.  So what was he to do?  Why, make it again, of course!

So almost 20 years later he set out to remake it bigger and better.  Roger Moore was Bond now, though, and probably had little interest in the Non-Eon production, and frankly was a different kind of Bond anyway and would have been a poor fit for the script.  Fortunately, Connery was still around.  And if you'll recall, he parted company with Eon on somewhat acrimonious grounds.  When McClory approached him with the idea of revisiting his glory days (and presumably gobs of money), he was naturally receptive.  And thus we got Thunderball 2: Electric Boogaloo-- Never Say Never Again.