20 Things You Didn’t Know About GoldenEye (1995)

20. Mind The Gap

There was a six-year gap between Bond films owing to legal issues surrounding the ownership and use of the television rights to the previous 16 Bond films.

During this time, a truce was called in the Cold War and the Soviet Union fell, leading many to question Double-0 Seven’s relevance in the modern world. Nevertheless, pre-production work on a new film had continued.

“The Property of a Lady”, named after a posthumously-released 1966 short story by Ian Fleming, was tentatively planned for a 1991 release date and would have seen Timothy Dalton’s James Bond encountering dangerous nanotechnology in Scotland, Japan, and Hong Kong. However, the legal battles prevented filming and the movie gradually shifted towards its finished state as GoldenEye.

Screenwriters and potential directors came and went, whilst Dalton informed producer, Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli that he would like to return for a third and potentially final Bond film. Cubby told him that he could not simply return for one film and then leave after so long a gap between films. Not wanting to play James Bond forevermore, Dalton resigned from the role on 11 April 1994.

Pierce Brosnan was announced as the new James Bond in June 1994. He kept a copy of Fleming’s 1959 novel, Goldfinger during filming as Goldfinger (1964) had been the first Bond film that he had seen at the tender age of 11. His faith in it clearly paid off: GoldenEye became the most successful Bond film since Moonraker (1979).