MovieChat Forums > Never Say Never Again (1983) Discussion > What was the story on how this movie got...

What was the story on how this movie got made?

posted 8 years ago by Slideman67
3 replies | jump to latest

I read about the situation once but I have forgotten the details. How was this made and why were they not sued, since this is a remake of Thunderball?

[–] 8 years ago

[deleted]

[–] mistermycroft 8 years ago

The above is correct, with a few added details:

THUNDERBALL the novel came out in 1961, and McClory immediately sued Fleming over it when he discovered that the latter used his ideas. They settled the lawsuit and McClory got all of the movie rights to it

After Goldfinger, EON and McClory teamed up in 1965 to do THUNDERBALL. But part of the deal was, that after 10 years, McClory could do his own film

So in 1976, McClory and his friends started working on WARHEAD, with Sean Connery's input

The 1977 Roger Moore film THE SPY WHO LOVED ME was supposed to have Blofeld instead of Stromberg, but McClory threatened to sue EON for using his character, so they changed the name to Stromberg

Since McClory had the right to re-make Thunderball, that is what he did, with Connery's help. Sean was still bitter with EON over the 6 films he did with them, believing that they unfairly made millions of dollars off of him

In the 1990s, McClory tried to do a THIRD version of Thunderball, but he died, and his family sold the rights to EON, so now EON controls everything, including Blofeld, SPECTRE, etc. and there can be no more rival Bond films, ever

[–] TMC-4 (20304) 5 years ago

https://www.quora.com/Never-Say-Never-Again-was-an-unofficial-non-Canon-James-Bond-movie-starring-Sean-Connery-made-with-the-express-intention-of-starting-an-alternative-Bond-franchise-It-was-a-relative-critical-and-commercial-success-so/answer/Jim-Doherty-11

In the late 1950’s, Thunderball started out as a movie script for a proposed film to be called James Bond - Secret Agent. It was an original screenplay, using Fleming’s characters, but not based on any of the novels published to that point. Fleming collaborated with McClory and Jack Whittingham on the screenplay.

When the film failed to come to fruition, Fleming took the script, or at least elements of it, and novelized it into Thunderball. He had already novelized a number of screen treatments he had written for episodes of a proposed James Bond TV series, a series that also failed to come to fruition, into short stories that were published in For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy, so he was familiar with the process of turning a screenplay or teleplay into prose fiction.

When Thunderball was published, McClory sued, and the case was eventually settled with McClory getting the film rights to the book, and a credit on the title page as the co-author, with Fleming and Whittingham, of the movie script that was the basis for the book.

That’s why McClory was credited as the line producer on the EON version of Thunderball in 1965, and why he was able to produce one independent remake in 1983, and came close to producing a second remake in 2000.