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Thunderball (film)

Thunderball
Theatrical release poster by Robert McGinnis and Frank McCarthy
Directed byTerence Young
Screenplay byRichard Maibaum
John Hopkins
Original screenplay by
Story byKevin McClory
Jack Whittingham
Ian Fleming
Based onThunderball
by Ian Fleming
Produced byKevin McClory
Starring
CinematographyTed Moore
Edited byPeter Hunt
Ernest Hosler
Music byJohn Barry
Production
company
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release dates
  • 9 December 1965 (1965-12-09) (Tokyo, premiere)
  • 22 December 1965 (1965-12-22) (United States)
  • 29 December 1965 (1965-12-29) (United Kingdom)
Running time
130 minutes
CountriesUnited Kingdom[1][2][3]
United States[4]
LanguageEnglish
Budget$9 million
Box office$141.2 million

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. 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. It was the third and final Bond film to be directed by Terence Young, with its screenplay by Richard Maibaum and John Hopkins.

The film follows Bond's mission to find two NATO atomic bombs stolen by SPECTRE, which holds the world ransom to the tune of £100 million in diamonds under threat of destroying an unspecified metropolis in either the United Kingdom or the United States (later revealed to be Miami). The search leads Bond to the Bahamas, where he encounters Emilio Largo, the card-playing, eyepatch-wearing SPECTRE Number Two. 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 film's complex production comprised four different units, and about a quarter of the film comprises underwater scenes.[5] Thunderball was the first Bond film shot in widescreen Panavision and the first to have a running time of over two hours.

Although planned by Bond film series producers Albert R. 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. 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,[6] and for McClory to receive sole producer credit on this film; Broccoli and Saltzman instead served as executive producers.[7]

The film was exceptionally successful: its worldwide box-office receipts of $141.2 million (equivalent to $1,365,200,000 in 2023) exceeded not only that of each of its predecessors but that of every one of the next five Bond films that followed it. Thunderball remains the most financially successful film of the series in North America when adjusted for ticket price inflation.[8] In 1966, John Stears won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects[9] and BAFTA nominated production designer Ken Adam for an award.[10] Some critics and viewers praised the film and branded it a welcome addition to the series, while others found the aquatic action repetitious. The movie was followed by 1967's You Only Live Twice. In 1983, Warner Bros. released a second film adaptation of the Thunderball novel under the title Never Say Never Again, with McClory as executive producer.

  1. ^ "Thunderball". Lumiere. European Audiovisual Observatory. Archived from the original on 24 July 2019. Retrieved 9 October 2020.
  2. ^ "BFI Database". bfi.org. British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 17 June 2017. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
  3. ^ "AMPAS Database". Oscars.org. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
  4. ^ "Thunderball". AFI Catalog.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference making of was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ "McClory, Sony and Bond: A History Lesson". Universal Exports.net. Archived from the original on 13 December 2007. Retrieved 23 December 2007.
  7. ^ Culhane, John (9 July 1989). "'Broccoli . . . Cubby Broccoli' : How a Long Island vegetable farmer became the man who produced all of the real James Bond movies". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 11 June 2015. Retrieved 9 June 2015.
  8. ^ "James Bond Movies at the Box Office". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on 25 April 2013. Retrieved 6 June 2017.
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference academy was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ "BAFTA Awards 1965". British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Archived from the original on 26 December 2007. Retrieved 16 January 2008.