The Casino Royale Story

Seeing as Casino Royale is on its way to becoming the highest-grossing Bond movie ever, I thought it might be time to reveal the story of how Ian Fleming's first Bond novel finally made its way on to the screen some 50 years after it was written. It's not merely a tale of "they just never got around to it"; it's a 40 year-long epic in the making, that required three corporate mergers, the embittered screenwriter of Thunderball, and the film rights to Spiderman in order to come into being.

So, without further ado: The Casino Royale Story.

Casino Royale was written by Ian Fleming, and was published in 1953, the first of 14 Bond novels Fleming would write before his death in the mid-'60s. In 1955, Fleming sold the film rights for the book to two producers, who, despite their best efforts, were never able to get a film version made. The rights would eventually end up in the hands of Charles Friedman, who would sit on the property for nearly 10 years. (More on him later.)

In the meantime, Fleming sold the remaining film rights to his current and future novels to Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli, who then made a deal with United Artists to produce a series of James Bond movies, the first being Dr. No in 1962. Subsequent films came out about once a year, and were incredibly successful.

During this period, the most contested Bond property in history came into play. No, not Casino Royale (which would be the logical guess, since that's what this story's about), but Thunderball. Thunderball started life as a screenplay for a Bond movie, written by Fleming and a man named Kevin McClory. McClory unsucessfully tried to get Thunderball made into a movie for a number of years. Following McClory's failure, Fleming sold the Bond novels to Saltzman and Broccoli, and went ahead and adapted Thunderball into a novel. McClory, angered by Fleming fucking around with material he thought was partly his, successfully sued Fleming, and was given the rights to all nearly all aspects of Thunderball. (This lawsuit also prevented Thunderball from being made into the first Bond film.) And, after unsuccessfully trying to get it made into a film once again, he ended up going to EON (Saltzman and Broccoli's production company) to get his movie made. As part of his agreement with EON, McClory was prohibited from doing anything with the Thunderball property for 10 years after the movie's release. His anger over this stipulation would cause McClory to become a thorn in the Bond franchise's side for more than 40 years, and eventually be integral in bringing Casino Royale to the screen.

In the late '60s, seeing the success of the Bond franchise, Charles Friedman went to EON in an attempt to get Casino Royale made into a movie. EON, soured by their collaboration with McClory, took a pass. Friedman went on to produce a comedic version of the book at Columbia. Because it was not made by EON, and is a comedy, no one has ever considered it one of the "official" Bond films. The property would remain dormant at Columbia until...

Let's jump ahead about 30 years: United Artists (which, due to bankruptcy in the early '80s, was now owned by MGM) continued to make Bond films; Kevin McClory had finally made a version of Thunderball in 1983, now called Never Say Never Again (yet another film not considered to be an "official" Bond movie); and Columbia Pictures was now a part of the growing Sony empire. Pretty much all was good in the Bond World.

That is, until the mid-'90s, when McClory got the bug in his ass that he wanted to make Thunderball yet again. He went to Sony, who owned the only other Bond property not owned by MGM. Together, he and Sony cooked up a plan to start a "rival" Bond franchise to compete against MGM's. (Remember that nonsense in the mid-'90s about Tarantino directing a Bond movie? Well, this is what that was all about.) Needless to say, MGM was quick to file suit to prevent this from happening. And, MGM might have lost that suit, seeing as Sony and McClory were the rightful owners of the properties they intended to produce, had they not owned the one thing Sony wanted more than a Bond movie: the movie rights to Spiderman, which MGM had acquired when Carolco went bankrupt.

In exchange for the rights to Spiderman, Sony relinquished any claim to the Bond franchise, giving MGM the rights to everything James Bond. This allegedly also included Thunderball, a fact McClory still contests. (It's worth noting that Sony went on to make two Spiderman films that grossed roughly half of what the entire Bond franchise has grossed, and MGM went on to make two Bond films that, well...they should have kept Spiderman.)

Which brings us up to 2005. Kirk Kerkorian, the billionaire who had owned MGM, on and off, for 35 years, decided it was time to sell MGM for the fourth time. And, after a brief bidding war, MGM ended up in the hands of (surprise, surprise) Sony. With the acquisition came the rights to the Bond movies, including Casino Royale, a property it and Columbia Pictures had previously owned for 35 years.

Which is how it came to pass that Sony finally got to make the "official" version of the last original Bond property, 50 years after the original book was published.

And I bet you thought they just picked that one out of a hat.