20 Things You Didn't Know About The World Is Not Enough (1999)
7. Istanbul On The Surface
The World Is Not Enough was meant to see James Bond return to Istanbul for the first time since From Russia With Love.
The city appears in the latter stages of the film, but the audience is sadly not immersed in the location as fully as they were in the earlier Bond epic. This is partly because a terrorist atrocity in the city around the time of filming led the filmmakers to re-evaluate the safety of the location.
Whilst it was too late not to involve the Turkish metropolis in some capacity, it was decided that only a skeleton crew would visit Istanbul, whilst the principal cast and crew would remain in the United Kingdom, even though some sets had already be constructed in the city.
As a result, the closest that the principal players and the audience actually get to Istanbul are shots of its skyline and of The Bosphorus. The majority of the Istanbul locations were instead represented by soundstage sets and practical locations in the United Kingdom. For instance, Elektra’s villa was the Küçüksu Pavilion on the Asian shore of The Bosphorus instead of being in Baku, whilst the interior was a combination of Luton Hoo Hotel and sets at Pinewood Studios.
The Maiden's Tower was also off-limits and appears only in establishing shots, otherwise being represented by sets at Pinewood, even for the sequence in which Valentin Zukovsky disembarks from his boat during the latter stages of the film.