5. Thunderball Was The first James Bond Screenplay
The story of
Thunderball is incredibly complicated. Heres a very brief summary. In 1958, wannabe film-producer Kevin McClory contacted Ian Fleming regarding James Bond and suggested that they collaborate on a James Bond screenplay. With various other writers in the mix, they developed a story involving Blofeld and SPECTRE holding the world to ransom, but the project never got off the ground and Fleming, perhaps unwisely, reused the basic storyline for the novel
Thunderball for which he was credited as the sole author. When Harry Saltzman and Albert R Broccolis James Bond movie series was well underway, with Sean Connery as 007, McClory began demanding that he should be involved, and so a deal was done to film
Thunderball with him as producer (at least in name). That didnt pacify McClory who continued to litigate against Eon Productions essentially until his death, eventually producing a rival Bond film in 1983 when
Never Say Never Again (a remake of
Thunderball, being the only Bond work McClory had any claim on) with Sean Connery went up against Roger Moore in
Octopussy. Moore just edged a win, with his film taking $68m in the US, against $55m for the rival.
Thunderball meantime, although not rated highly by many critics, was the highest-grossing Bond movie to date and, adjusted for inflation, is the most successful Bond movie ever by quite some way. It sits at number 28 on Box Office Mojos list, with the next most successful Bond movie,
Goldfinger, languishing at 42 and nothing else in the top 100.