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The First James Bond Casino Royal


FxrAndy

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Well the story is not really funny or anything, just long and interesting if you care about that sort of thing.

In a nutshell the movie rights to Casino Royal have been passed around from studio to studio for years. It was originally made into a TV show in 1954 and so the rights to Casino Royal laid with the producers. In the early 60's the Bond movies started and became popular but those producers did not have the rights to Casino Royal. The producer who DID have those rights (after he bought them from the TV guys) approached the Broccoli's (the producers for the official movies) and offered to do a joint venture to make Casino Royal into a movie.

Well the Broccoli's felt they had been burned by doing thi sonce before. They had done a co-production on Thunderball with the guy who co-wrote the book. This is a very convoluted sotry in and of itself and it was why that producer was able to re-make Thunderball years later (Never say Never again) as an un-officual bond movie but still using the characters.

ANYWAY, the Broccolis did not want any more co-ventures and so they turned down Casino Royal. The producer went ahead and started producing it as an alternative James Bond movie and hired Peter Sellers to star. Sellers wanted to play it more or less straight while the producers wanted a spoof. This led to Sellers leaving the production mid way through... they had to change the script and hired David Niven (who was one of the original canidates to play Bond in Dr. No) and then tried to piece together a spoof of Bond using the old Sellers footage and the new stuff they were shooting. In part this is why the movie is so aweful, it never had any sort of focus and was changing as they were making it and so on.

So the spoof Casino Royal came out in 1967 and the official Bond producers never had the rights to it. Then all sorts of bizarre things happened including casino Royal almost being made again as a serious un-official Bond movie in the 90's. Eventually through several studios merging with each other Sony now has the rights to ALL the Bond films including casino Royal and Thunderball / Never Say Never Again. this allowed them to make Casino Royal as an offical Bond and also prevent any more un-offical films from being made.

I have simplified this of course and some details may be incorrect but you get the gist of it... nothing is ever as simple as it appears.

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@ Tvt thanks for the insight, nothing is ever as simple as it seams, when you watch the two films you see alot of x overs of names and what ever, i agree it is awfull but you can see where austin powers came from!

thanks again

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