In 2013, after decades of litigation, the rights to Never Say Never Again reverted to MGM (the studio behind EON’s Bond). For the first time, the “rogue Bond” was officially allowed to sit alongside Dr. No and Skyfall in the home video box sets. Today, it is legally recognized as a valid part of the 007 filmography, albeit the black sheep of the family. For modern audiences raised on Daniel Craig’s brutal, emotional Bond, Never Say Never Again feels surprisingly prescient. Craig’s Bond in No Time to Die (2021) is also an aging warrior, weary of the game, facing irrelevance. Connery did it first, in a cheap wig, with a video-game-obsessed villain.
The plot follows the classic SPECTRE playbook: The terrorist organization, led by the grotesque and lobotomized (played with theatrical menace by Max von Sydow), steals two nuclear warheads. They demand an impossible ransom from NATO, threatening to obliterate a major city. An aging James Bond (Connery), initially relegated to a remedial physical training course (more on that later), is reactivated to track the bombs down.
In the sprawling, martini-soaked history of cinema’s longest-running franchise, one film sits on a peculiar throne: a bastard child, a legal loophole, and a glorious act of cinematic rebellion. That film is Never Say Never Again . Never Say Never Again -James Bond 007-
The film is a time capsule of ego, legal absurdity, and creative risk. It is not a great Bond film. It is arguably not even a good Bond film by the standards of Goldfinger or Casino Royale . But it is a fascinating Bond film.
The results were a statistical draw. Octopussy grossed $187.5 million worldwide. Never Say Never Again grossed $160 million. Given that the renegade film cost less to make and Connery took a massive upfront salary, it was considered a financial success. Critically, reception was mixed. Critics loved Connery’s charisma and the novel “aging hero” theme but decried the sluggish pacing and cheap-looking production design (the film feels more like a 70s TV movie than a lavish Bond epic). In 2013, after decades of litigation, the rights
In the 1960s, Ian Fleming collaborated with screenwriters Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham, and Ivar Bryce to develop a film script. When that project fell through, Fleming turned the script into the novel Thunderball . McClory sued, winning the literary and film rights to the Thunderball story. The 1965 EON film Thunderball was only made because McClory allowed it, retaining the right to remake the film after ten years.
However, culturally, Sean Connery won. The image of Connery in a dinner jacket, raising an eyebrow, was so potent that it reminded audiences what the character used to be. Roger Moore, seeing the writing on the wall, retired from the role two years later after A View to a Kill . Never Say Never Again was a one-hit-wonder. Legal battles over the rights to Thunderball continued for decades. For years, the film was orphaned—unavailable on streaming platforms, stuck in legal purgatory. Kevin McClory tried to remake it again in the 1990s with Liam Neeson, but those plans collapsed. Today, it is legally recognized as a valid
The trail leads from the health spas of Shrublands to the opulent casinos of the French Riviera, and finally to the villainous lair of (Klaus Maria Brandauer), a wealthy, psychologically complex psychopath who is obsessed with a video game called Domination (a prescient piece of 80s futurism).
