Original subtitles

No Time To Die is the 25th film in the unkillable James Bond franchise.

A history that spans six decades and as many 007s, filled with trendsetting fashion and

badass cars, sex symbols and shameless sexism, jetpacks and boom box rocket launchers, trips

to volcano lairs and space cities, and just a stupid amount of bad puns.

Yet it was all built on a novel that could never be properly made.

After a bizarre detour in the 1960s, Casino Royale in 2006 fulfilled a 50 year pipedream

of finally adapting a book lost to rights holders and lawyers.

It was a long, arduous mission, classified as a Sh*t Show.

Ian Fleming wrote his first novel in 1953, titled Casino Royale, and introduced the world

to the British secret agent, James Bond, 007.

It was a small success, enough so that CBS paid Fleming a mere one thousand dollars to

adapt the book for their anthology series, Climax! in 1954.

The one hour episode was mildly faithful, hitting mostly the same beats.

Bond is tasked with beating the villain Le Chiffre in a card game, to reveal a wider

conspiracy that includes his love interest.

It was performed live for tv, and starred Peter Lorre as Le Chiff, and Barry Nelson

as the American spy, Jimmy Bond.

It was Bond’s first on screen appearance, and isn’t remembered much beyond that (maybe

besides some thrilling moments of baccarat).

Bond: "Card."

Dealer: "Three at the bank...

"...and four."

[Audience gasps]

That next year, Fleming sold the film rights to Russian actor/director George Ratoff for

six thousand dollars.

Ratoff’s production never made it to the table and he died in 1960.

His wife then sold the rights to A Streetcar Named Desire producer Charles Feldman.

Fleming continued to write more Cold War adventures for 007, inspired by his years as a naval

intelligence officer for the Royal Navy.

Fleming’s navy buddy, Kevin McClory, saw the potential of the James Bond character

and together they started work on a movie script.

Again, nothing materialized, so Fleming adapted it into his ninth Bond novel, Thunderball,

giving McClory zero credit.

McClory rightfully sued and won.

It wasn’t until early 1961 that Bond hit the jackpot.

President John F. Kennedy revealed, in Life magazine, his ten favorite books of the previous

year, and it included Fleming’s fifth novel, From Russia with Love.

James Bond sales skyrocketed.

Canadian producer Harry Saltzman jumped at the popularity, buying the rights of every

current and future Bond novel that Fleming wrote (aside from Casino Royale).

Then Saltzman partnered with fellow producer Albert Broccoli to form Eon Productions.

Its sole purpose?

To make James Bond films.

The pair wanted to start with Thunderball, but the legal troubles with McClory made it

a messy situation not worth solving.

They decided on Dr. No, the sixth book.

Most studios didn’t want to fund the film because it wasn’t ‘American’ enough,

but United Artists bet that with a flat one million, they could make it happen.

But that meant Eon needed to make it on the cheap.

Saltzman and Broccoli wanted Cary Grant or David Niven to play Bond, yet any mainline

star would be too expensive, so they cast an unknown Scottish actor, Sean Connery.

Connery [singing]: "I love the ground she walks upon... my darling Irish girl!"

With a screenplay and director set, production was all in.

Meanwhile, Casino Royale rights holder, Charles Feldman, wasn’t about to live and let die.

During that same time period, he lined up one of the biggest directors of their generation,

Howard Hawks, and had a faithful adaptation written by prolific screenwriter and playwright,

Ben Hecht.

They even were in talks to get Cary Grant to star.

However, things were taking too long, and Dr. No’s production wrapped insanely quick.

Feldman and Hawks were given an early print of the film, and after seeing Connery’s

Bond, Hawks folded.

Dr. No released in 1962 and debuted to a mixed reaction from critics, but it was a resounding

success with audiences, making nearly $60 million dollars worldwide (off that measly

one million).

While it’s definitely of its time and the budget really shows, it followed the book

fairly closely and established so many trademarks of the James Bond series that continue today;

the card playing, the evil lairs, the cars, the chases, the puns...

Bond: "I think they were on the way to a funeral."

...the girls, the gun barrel, that theme...

[Bond theme]

...and of course, cementing Connery not only as Bond, but as the epitome of cool.

Sylvia: "Mr.?"

Bond: "Bond...

James Bond."

United Artists and Eon Productions easily had a franchise in the making.

Eon dealt two more sequels in two years, From Russia With Love in 63, and Goldfinger in

64.

Debating the next film, Eon entered talks with Charles Feldman to make Casino Royale

together.

However, Feldman wanted a preposterous producing fee.

Realizing the world was not enough for Feldman, Eon hit the ejector seat.

A burned Feldman then secretly met with Sean Connery to see if he’d join his film, betraying

Eon.

Connery wanted a then-unheard of one million to do it.

Bond: "Shocking... positively shocking."

Feldman couldn’t make that work.

Eon, on the other hand, had successfully negotiated with Kevin McClory to make Thunderball, bringing

him on as a producer.

Thunderball released in 1965 becoming the highest grossing Bond film to date.

An exhausted Feldman threw out dozens of drafts of Casino Royale (including one written by

film royalty Billy Wilder).

He instead pivoted to making a spoof/satire of James Bond, since the spy genre was now

so immensely popular, and things quickly turned around.

With no official script to speak of, Feldman ran with one idea, that MI6 would start calling

all of their secret agents James Bond, to fool the enemy.

He hired four directors to shoot simultaneously (including the legendary John Huston).

Guest: "He gave me four scripts to read, and I said to Charlie Feldman, 'where's the book?

Let me read the book.'

And he said, 'well,' he said, 'we can't use the book because they've used sequences in

every other Bond film.'

He said, 'the only thing we've got left is the title and the casino.'

There it was, and Charlie said, 'well look, you write the last third of the picture.'

Now how do you get on a picture and get that?

He just said, 'treat this as a psychedelic movie: four directors, doing four different

segments, and uh... treat it as fun.'

Which is what we did."

All of a sudden Feldman had a Full House of talent; Peter Sellers as a decoy Bond, Orson

Welles as Le Chiff, Woody Allen as nephew Jimmy Bond, David Niven as the original Bond

(one of Eon’s choices), and even Ursula Andress, the actual Bond girl from Dr. No.

And in 1966, production on Casino Royale began… and things instantly spiraled out of control.

Casino Royale’s production was an embarrassment of riches, with lavish sets, a Burt Barharach

score, and a clash of over-bloated egos running wild.

The worst of it was Peter Sellers and Orson Welles (who were both notoriously very difficult

people to work with) as they were jealous of the other’s success and were absolutely

savage on set.

Sellers hired Dr. Strangelove co-writer Terry Southern to rewrite only his lines as he wanted

to upstage Welles and Woody Allen.

And rumoredly, Sellers wanted to prove he could pull off a serious version of Bond…

in a comedy film.

Welles, in return, demanded that his Le Chiff remained seated and performed magic tricks,

forcing set changes.

Everyday turned into passive-aggressive dickishness...

Bond: "Oh I- Now it's finished, is it?

Oh fantastic.

Wonderful.

Incredible, incredible.

That's absolutely marvelous.

I've never seen anything like it."

...until Sellers forced Feldman to have them shoot their scenes separately.

Even then Sellers would disappear for days at a time, while Welles would take to drinking

champagne all day, turning the set into a drunken party.

Nothing would get done.

When a fed up co-director Joe McGrath called out Sellers’ attitude on set, Sellers punched

him in the face... and they were friends.

McGrath quit.

And Feldman was left with finding a director that Sellers would approve of.

Eventually Feldman fired Sellers before finishing his scenes, Woody Allen was given free reign

to write his own dialog and the ending was thrown together last minute just to get it

all over with, leaving co-director Val Guest to cobble together a narrative from the mishmash

of everything filmed to that point.

Guest: "It was at the end of the film, when all these things have got together, and they've

all been edited by Bill Lenny, my editor (who had done his best), Charlie Feldman said,

'well... it sort of somehow doesn't make sense.'

'Oh my, that's an understatement.'

And he said, 'it needs a sort of a storyline going through it.'

Now this is a hell of a time to think of that when you've just made the film!

And I said, 'yes.

It needs a thread going right through all these sequences.'"

Guest wrote and shot a handful of scenes to fill in some holes.

The only thing really connecting it to the original novel is that Bond goes to a casino,

plays baccarat with Le Chiff, and gets tortured after winning.

All told, six different directors would go through the film, the shoot went from 8 weeks

to 8 months, it would cost upwards of twelve million (making it the most expensive “Bond”

film), and the stress gave Feldman a heart attack and it was the last film he would make.

Casino Royale shuffled to theaters in April of 1967 and, by luck of the draw, it was a

small hit.

However, it’s nowhere near as funny as it thinks it is.

The film wastes all that talent for drawnout scenes of unrelated nonsense, sex jokes, excuses

for more famous people doing walk-on cameos...

Peter O'Toole: "Excuse me, are you Richard Burton?"

Peter Sellers: "No, I'm Peter O'Toole."

Peter O'Toole: "Then you're the finest man that ever breathed."

...and not nearly enough of this guy crushing it:

Hadley: "We've checked it out, sir.

International Mother's Help is a SMERSH cover operation, sir.

It supplies babysitters and au pair girls to some of the most important families."

Bond: "And why are the black flags there?"

Hadley: "They've been liquidated, I'm afraid, sir.

Uh, Finland?

Stabbed to death in the ladies sauna bath, sir.

Uh, Madrid?

Burnt in a blazing bordello, sir.

And Tokyo, sir?

Garroted in a geisha house."

"And to think that you knew Mata Hari, sir.

She really was one of the greats."

It was all but forgotten by the time Eon’s fifth Bond film, You Only Live Twice, hit

screens in June (which is remembered for the wrong reasons).

Bond: "Now what's the plan for me?"

Tanaka: "First, you become a Japanese."

"You will be a poor Japanese worker with humble Japanese wife at your side."

Bond [speaking Japanese with a thick Scottish accent]: "Ohayōgozaimasu."

A year later, Charles Feldman died, and the rights for Casino Royale went to Columbia

Pictures.

James Bond and Eon Productions went on to have ups and downs through the next four decades.

George Lazenby served her Majesty once...

Bond: "He had lots of guts."

...to mixed reviews, before Eon got Connery back for one more.

Then Roger Moore donned the tux for seven films (reaching peak camp).

[Tarzan yell]

[Beach Boys' song plays]

[Slide whistle sound effect]

[Love Theme From Romeo & Juliet by Tchaikovsky plays]

Fleming died in 1964, Harry Saltzmen would leave Eon in 74, the quality of the films

would bounce around rapidly, and Bond’s popularity would taper off considerably by

the mid-eighties.

Then there was the matter of Never Say Never Again in 1983.

A rogue Kevin McClory produced this virtual remake of Thunderball, for no reason at all

other than the fact he still had the rights to the novel.

The non-Eon production, stars a clearly older Sean Connery, who was given a stupid amount

of money and creative control.

Eon sued the living daylights out of McClory to keep it from being made or released.

While they were unsuccessful, the film isn’t fondly remembered or considered part of the

James Bond canon.

Timothy Dalton would suit up for two Eon films, and was set for a third, but MGM Studios (who

bought United Artists in 81) fell into a black hole of legal madness, that no one has patience

diving into, and Dalton’s contract expired.

Kara: "What happened?"

Bond: "He got the boot."

Once solved though, the seventeenth Bond film was announced in 1993.

But Albert Broccoli was ready to pass the torch.

He made his stepson Michael G. Wilson and daughter Barbara Broccoli the heads of Eon

Productions.

But by 1994 the world had changed, the Cold War was over.

Critics questioned, was Bond relevant?

M: "I think you're a sexist misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War."

Wilson and Broccoli showed that with the right hand (and the right star, Pierce Brosnan),

James Bond could be timeless.

Directed by Martin Campbell, GoldenEye in 1995 was thrilling, sexy, and, after years

of seemingly being on autopilot, confident.

Despite more baccarat, it revitalized Bond for a new generation (and, really, GoldenEye

64 also had a lot to do with that).

The three sequels that followed, became increasingly more expensive, attempting to up the ante

against CG-filled blockbusters.

Brosnan’s last, Die Another Day in 2002, was the highest grossing entry in the franchise,

but is often pointed to as the pinnacle of Bond absurdity; the invisible car, the ice

palace, the race switching (?!), oh yeah, and Bond surfing a tsunami to outrun a space

laser.

Eon realized they wrote themselves into a corner.

"From the point of view of Barbara and I, and our writers, it was very hard to go- continue

down that fantasy style of filmmaking.

And we really had to reconceive Bond."

Complicating things further, three highly successful Austin Powers films made the entire

series an outdated joke.

Tanaka: "In Japan, men always come first.

Women come second."

Austin: "Or sometimes not at all!"

As a stop gap, Eon had their writers from the last two films, Neal Purvis and Robert

Wade, develop a spin-off for Halle Berry’s character, Jinx.

Then the turn…

Kevin McClory reared his ugly head once again.

And he wanted to double down on another remake of Thunderball, this time with Sony Pictures.

Vesper: "You're not seriously going back there?"

Bond: "I wouldn't dream of it."

MGM sued, won, then paid Sony (who owned Columbia) for the film rights to Casino Royale.

At long last, Casino Royale was with Eon Productions.

Ironically, Sony would purchase MGM outright in 2004, bringing everything under one roof

anyway.

Unfortunately Albert Broccoli died in 1996, never pulling that trump card.

His daughter called it her father’s “Holy Grail” and she saw it as a great time as

any to start fresh with James Bond.

In early 2004, an extremely unlikely candidate emerged asking to make Casino Royale; Quentin

Tarantino.

Hot off of his Kill Bill films, he started a public campaign, trying to get Eon to hire

him as the next director.

He was a massive fan of Brosnan’s Bond and wanted to make a faithful adaptation.

But so faithful in fact, it would be a period piece set in the 1950s, filmed in black and

white, yet still star Pierce Brosnan.

Tarantino and Brosnan pitched this to Eon, but they couldn’t get on board with the

idea.

Tarantino then offered to buy the rights.

Eon had been trying to make this film since the 60s and had just gotten the rights to

do so; they were not about to throw in the cards after all this time.

To this day, Tarantino is bitter about being passed up, claiming he was the only reason

Casino Royale was made.

"The reason they did Casino Royale all comes down to me.

I made it a point that I said I wanted to do Casino Royale.

They were already on record as saying that the movie was unfilmable.

But then after I said it and talked about it for a little bit, then the big thing on

all the internets was that was what the fans wanted to see.

And so that's when they- oh maybe it's not so unfilmable."

[an inflated ego bursting]

Bond: "Well, he always did have an inflated opinion of himself."

In October of 2004, Brosnan’s contract wasn’t renewed...

Q: "Don't say it!"

Bond: "The writing's on the wall?"

and in February of 2005, Casino Royale was announced as the 21st Bond film.

Inspired by the currently-in-production Batman Begins, Eon took on the idea of reimagining

a franchise film, starting from scratch and ditching the continuity; aka: a reboot (If

you ever wondered where that craze started, look no further than these two films).

Though the one carry over would be Judi Dench, because-

M: "Utter one more syllable and I'll have you killed!"

Exactly.

cCrash writer and two time Academy Award winner Paul Haggis joined returning screenwriters

Purvis and Wade to adapt the book.

They loved the chance to write the first Bond film with an actual character arc, something

that James Bond had never experienced in his twenty previous films.

Eon also brought back Martin Campbell to direct, because of how well he revamped Bond in GoldenEye.

In what turned out to be a short casting process, Eon only screen tested a handful of actors

(one being Henry Cavill, deemed too young), and only one was offered the role.

In October of 2005, Eon found their 007 in British actor Daniel Craig.

Craig was obviously a wild card of a choice; an unconventional looking chap, who was far

more a diamond in the rough, compared to the movie star looks of Pierce Brosnan or Sean

Connery.

Known mostly in the US for playing weasley bad guys, across the pond, Craig had been

proving himself a worthy Bond on TV, and especially in Matthew Vaughn’s Layer Cake.

XXXX: "I mean, I f**king hate guns... although that one is really pretty... is that Second

World War?"

Gene: "Hey!

Point it upwards, huh?"

Barbara Broccoli actually had her eyes on him since 1998’s Elizabeth, as he exuded

not just cool confidence, but the malice of a trained killer (which would be a stark contrast

to his predecessors).

Craig already feared the loss of anonymity and the curse of type casting, but the reaction

to him earning the role was brutal.

In what would sadly become the norm, Craig was dragged through the mud by fans.

They couldn’t possibly accept a blue-eyed, blonde-haired Bond.

His official announcement press conference didn’t help either; arriving via a naval

escort, sporting long locks, a skinny frame, and a grumpy attitude towards reporters, he

appeared more villain than Bond.

Throughout production and up to release, infamous sites (like CraigNotBond.com) would continually

spread rumors and general hate towards the actor.

"You know, when Sean Connery was hired, everyone said 'oh disaster' because it wasn't David

Niven."

Bond: "They'll print anything these days."

44 years toiling in development hell, Casino Royale finally earned its license to thrill.

Eon’s commitment to a rougher, stripped down Bond encompassed action scenes and stunts

performed practically, with little greenscreen or CGI to be found.

And as filming went on Eon knew they were absolutely right choosing Daniel Craig.

He related to this disconnected, emotionally charged version of 007 and he used the bad

press to fuel his performance.

And he took it upon himself to make sure the film was true to that character, even if that

meant arguing with Martin Campbell’s choices.

They had troubles getting an Aston Martin to flip, and Campbell agonized over how to

film an hours-long poker game (cashing in on Texas Hold Em’s rising competitive scene,

and seeing as it was more widely known than baccarat).

Craig: "When you film one person, you've got to film the other person, it's got to look

like they're both looking at each other.

And invariably at some point, somebody will look at each other and it won't look like

they're looking each other.

Now add to that, the fact is that they've got cards in front of them and a pile of chips,

which every time you cut to them, on a continuity level, has to be accurate."

But that aside, production was as smooth as a Vesper martini.

Bond: "You know, that's not half bad."

Casino Royale raised the stakes on November 17th, 2006, immediately being hailed as one

of the best Bond films ever made, if not the greatest.

Smart, intense and faithful to the novel, the film reinvents James Bond for the 21st

century, where his ego, recklessness, and misogyny are character flaws, not features.

And the much-feared Daniel Craig performance showed depths never before seen in 007, dangerous

yet vulnerable.

The haters pretty much shut up after opening weekend and the film’s pot grew to a franchise

record of $606 million worldwide.

It took 53 years, from page to screen, before Casino Royale had a proper adaptation.

But Eon Productions did so with style, finesse, and for the first time in its history, elevated

the series to prestige filmmaking.

Modernized and popular again, Craig’s reign alone has amassed over $3 billion.

And while his time as 007 has come to an end, a new James Bond will always return (in whatever

form), as Eon has done 5 times before.

It’s a good thing too, because after Amazon purchased MGM in 2021, 007 will have to face

their first real world Bond villain; a maniacal, balding billionaire, hell bent on world domination

(and beyond)…

No, not that one.

[Jeffery Bezos laughs]

Bezos: "I want to go on this flight ,because it's a big deal for me."

Presenter: "Let's see you with our own eyes, I'd like to roll the tape."

M: "My god, what's Bond doing?"

Q: "I think he's attempting re-entry, sir."

Bezos: "Wooooo!"