Roger Moore’s Bond era stands for crazy stories and absurd gimmicks. Sean Connery almost imitated his fellow agent. The Scottish acting legend was involved in a 007 project in which the secret agent fights mechanical sharks and swings his fists on the head of the Statue of Liberty – decades before the finale of X-Men: The Movie. The The working title of the James Bond film was Warhead.
This is what is known about the James Bond film that was never made
Warhead wasn’t just some fixed idea in a Bond writer’s head, it was the script was created with the collaboration of Sean Connery himself.
The first Kino-007 actually completed his last spy mission with Diamond Fever in 1971. Then Kevin McClory approached him. The Irish author and producer was involved in a Bond adaptation with Ian Fleming at the end of the 1950s, but it did not materialize. Instead, Fleming turned the story into his novel Thunderball. This led to a legal battle in which McClory was awarded the film rights to the novel. On the first film adaptation, Fireball from 1965, McClory worked with the Bond company Eon.
In the 70s, however, he wanted the novel independent of the main Bond series adapt. To do this, McClory contacted former Bond actor Sean Connery.
The story of Warhead: James Bond fights against nuclear hammerhead sharks
As the BBC broke it down, McClory hired Ipcress writer Len Deighton in 1975 to develop a script based on Thunderball with Connery. Story ideas include:
This reads like a plan just like Dr. Evil…
Here you will find external content from YouTube, which complements the article. You can display it and hide it again with one click.
In a 1983 interview with Rolling Stone, Connery described the story of Warhead like this:
You know those planes that disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle? We had SPECTER do that. There was this fantastic fleet of aircraft under the sea – a whole world of things had been brought down there. They were to attack the financial center of the United States through the sewers of New York – which is possible – go straight to Wall Street. They’d have mechanical sharks in the bay and take over the Statue of Liberty, which is quite simpleand have the main troops on Ellis Island.
Note Connery’s personal assessment of the best possible plan for the invasion of New York.
More on the subject:
Why Warhead wasn’t made and Sean Connery returned anyway
How deeply Connery was involved in script development remains speculation. In any case, Warhead wasn’t filmed and the reason once again has to do with (annoying) paragraphs. In the script there are various parallels to the story of the Eon Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), which was developed at the same time. Both sides accused each other of plagiarism, but Eon was the first to obtain an injunction. Thereupon Connery withdrew from the project.
Warhead was initially on ice after Connery’s exit, but McClory still got his Bond film with the original 007: without Eon, the two brought the Thunderball adaptation Never Say Never Again to the cinema in 1983, which is still the case today only Bond film that is not part of the official 007 series. However, robo-sharks do not appear in it.
In the years that followed, McClory tried to manage Warhead with either Pierce Brosnan or Timothy Dalton, as MI6-HQ lists. However, the mechanical sharks remained a script dream.
Who will be the next James Bond after Daniel Craig remains a matter of speculation. Bond 26 will not be released in cinemas until 2025 at the earliest.