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Roger Moore vs. Sean Connery |
35th Anniversary: A Look Back At The Battle of the Bonds
May 16, 2018
By Ryan Porzl
For more than 55 years, the James Bond series has been around and been one of the biggest movie series in history. Through it all, the movies were largely done by Eon Productions and distributed by United Artists & MGM with very few exceptions. One of the those exceptions was in 1967 when a spoof of Casino Royale came out during Eon's You Only Live Twice. The second was far more interesting when in 1983 Eon's Octopussy featuring arguably the most popular actor to portray 007 went head to head against Never Say Never Again, a movie that was a remake of the previous Eon film Thunderball while starring the actor who returned to the role after a dozen years that he helped make famous. Even more so, it was a battle over two decades in the making that originally began between a producer against Bond creator Ian Fleming that continued with Eon. How did this happen and how did we get there? To celebrate the 35th Anniversary of what became known as "The Battle of the Bonds", we'll take a look at the beginning of Bond to the controversy over Thunderball to the events that led to the 1983 battle to the aftermath.