20 Things You Didn’t Know About Thunderball (1965)

20. Look Up! Look Down! Look Out! Here Comes The Biggest Bond Of All!

The executive producers of Thunderball, Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman had originally licensed the use of SPECTRE and its members from Irish filmmaker, Kevin McClory to avoid being sued for copyright infringement.

However, seeing the “Bondmania” gripping the world, McClory decided to make Thunderball in competition with Eon Productions, so Cubby and Harry decided to adapt On Her Majesty’s Secret Service after Goldfinger to prevent McClory from supplanting them.

McClory could not hire Sean Connery as Double-0 Seven as he was contracted to Eon, but considered casting Laurence Harvey, star of The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and The Silent Enemy (1958), as the British agent.

Scouting locations whilst Goldfinger was still in production, Kevin McClory marketed Thunderball as a rival Bond film but, by September 1964, he had agreed to co-produce it with Eon Productions. He also hoped to direct it, but Cubby and Harry insisted that a neutral third party should do so; Terence Young returned after initially leaving the official franchise when his request to be made a co-producer was declined.

Thunderball outperformed all expectations at the box office; when adjusted for inflation, it made approximately $1 billion worldwide, making it the second most financially successful Bond film after SkyFall (2012).