12. Ian Fleming Stipulated That The Plot of The Spy Who Loved Me Could Not Be Used By Movie-makers
Written towards the end of the series, and just about the time that the movies were coming out, the novel
The Spy Who Loved Me sits very oddly in the Bond canon. Even more peculiar than the demented
You Only Live Twice, its a first-person narrative about a young woman named Vivienne Michael who undergoes a sexual awakening in the company of two different men in turn. She then ends up working in a remote American motel and is terrorised by a pair of mobsters, until finally a mysterious British Secret Service agent turns up to save her. On signing the rights over to all the Bond novels, Fleming insisted that only the title of this, his ninth Bond novel, could be used by movie-makers and none of the story. As they had done with four out of the previous five films, the producers commissioned an entirely new story. Although bits-and-pieces of Fleming novels would turn up from time to time, it wouldnt be until
Casino Royale in 2006 that anything remotely resembling an adaptation would be attempted again.