The movie was followed by 1967's You Only Live Twice. Some critics and viewers praised the film and branded it a welcome addition to the series, while others found the aquatic action repetitious. In 1966, John Stears won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and BAFTA nominated production designer Ken Adam for an award. Thunderball remains the most financially successful film of the series in North America when adjusted for ticket price inflation. The film was exceptionally successful: its worldwide box office receipts of $141.2 million exceeded not only that of each of its predecessors but that of every one of the five Bond films that followed it. The lawsuit was settled out of court and Broccoli and Saltzman, fearing a rival McClory film, allowed him to retain certain screen rights to the novel's plot and characters, and for McClory to receive sole producer credit on this film Broccoli and Saltzman instead served as executive producers. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman as the first entry in the franchise, Thunderball was associated with a legal dispute in 1961 when former Fleming collaborators McClory and Whittingham sued him shortly after the 1961 publication of the novel, claiming he based it upon the screenplay the trio had written for a cinematic translation of James Bond. Thunderball was the first Bond film shot in widescreen Panavision and the first to have a running time of over two hours.Īlthough planned by Bond film series producers Albert R.

The film's complex production comprised four different units, and about a quarter of the film comprises underwater scenes. Backed by CIA agent Felix Leiter and Largo's mistress, Domino Derval, Bond's search culminates in an underwater battle with Largo's henchmen. The search leads Bond to the Bahamas, where he encounters Emilio Largo, the card-playing, eyepatch-wearing SPECTRE Number Two. The film follows Bond's mission to find two NATO atomic bombs stolen by SPECTRE, which holds the world for ransom of £100 million in diamonds under its threat to destroy an unspecified metropolis in either the United Kingdom or the United States (later revealed to be Miami). It was the third and final Bond film to be directed by Terence Young, with its screenplay by Richard Maibaum and John Hopkins. It is an adaptation of the 1961 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming, which in turn was based on an original screenplay by Jack Whittingham devised from a story conceived by Kevin McClory, Whittingham, and Fleming. Thunderball is a 1965 spy film and the fourth in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions, starring Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond.

Thunderball 1st edition