20 Things You Didn’t Know About The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

20. “But James, I Need You!” “So Does England!”

After The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) was critically and financially lambasted, the next movie had to prove that Double-0 Seven was still a viable cinema property.

Not helping matters were producer, Harry Saltzman’s poor finances, his wife’s terminal cancer, and his own depression. He sold his share in the Bond franchise to United Artists in 1975 for £20 million, which left his producing partner, Cubby Broccoli flying solo. However, United Artists showed its faith in Cubby by investing £13.5 million in the new film’s budget.

Meanwhile, Kevin McClory - who held the film rights to the 1961 Bond novel, Thunderball - learned that Cubby was planning to reintroduce Ernst Stavro Blofeld and SPECTRE as a platform for international terrorists to destroy the world, so he obtained an injunction to prevent this.

Thunderbirds (1965-1966) creator, Gerry Anderson also threatened legal action. He had written a Bond script earlier in the decade in which a villain named Zodiac used a supertanker to fire ballistic missiles and was shocked to learn of a similar concept in the new Bond script. However, the Supermarionation founder settled quickly and surrendered all interests in his script to Eon Productions.

Nevertheless, this led to the creation of a villain named Stavros (who was later renamed Karl Stromberg) to replace Blofeld and the removal of the terrorists’ ideologies from the plot.

Ultimately, 12 writers contributed to the script.