20 Things You Didn't Know About Die Another Day
3. “I See You Don’t Chase Dreams, You Live Them.”
Gustav Graves’s Icelandic ice palace took Peter Lamont and his team nearly six months to build.
It comprised both the bottom third of the exterior of the palace, constructed in the same location on the backlot of Pinewood Studios as the exterior of Fort Knox in Goldfinger (1964) and a fully-realised interior on the Albert R. Broccoli 007 Stage, not to mention a miniature of the entire site.
Initially, it was constructed purely as a hotel to house James Bond, Jinx, and Graves’s guests, as well as Jinx’s near-death experience in Miranda Frost’s flooding bedroom whilst the Icarus satellite melts the palace.
However, after shooting had started, Lee Tamahori felt that it would be a shame to waste such a magnificent set and therefore asked Lamont if they could stage the car chase between Bond’s Aston Martin V12 Vanquish and Zao’s Jaguar XKR inside the ice palace as well. The production designer confirmed that they could if the set was rebuilt with structural steel; the additional time and budget were authorised, leading to a new and exciting action sequence.