They were wrong on both counts. Thunderball was released in 1965, and when 1975 rolled around, McClory announced that his remake was going ahead without Broccoli and Saltzman. He even chose a title which would stake his claim to the character’s cinematic incarnation: James Bond of the Secret Service.

Licence to chill



If that weren’t provocative enough, he taunted his competitors at Eon by recruiting two co-writers who had once been friendly with them. The first of these was Len Deighton, three of whose novels had been made into Michael Caine films produced by Saltzman: The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain. The second co-writer was Connery, who had hung up his Walther PPK and his waterproof toupee after 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever. The actor had never written a screenplay before – or since, for that matter – but that wasn’t the point. In Robert Sellers’ definitive chronicle of the Fleming/McClory/Eon courtroom saga, The Battle for Bond, he argues that McClory’s “real motive was getting Connery’s name attached to his Bond project any which way he could”.