![]() ![]() So it came to pass that in 2013, SPECTRE became a part of the official 007 playground once again, just in time to tie the organization in with its modern counterpart, Quantum, in the 2015 film named for this shadowy group of newly restored evil.Īt this point, the only way that Ernst Stavro Blofeld won’t return would be due to Christoph Waltz not wanting to portray the character again. After Kevin McClory passed away in 2006, his family would move on to the point where they sold the rights to the intellectual property he held onto through the rest of his life back to the studio. While the series would eventually move on for decades without official use of SPECTRE or its main villain, circumstances eventually saw those rights landing with MGM and EON Productions once more. With a huge action sequence that saw Bond tormented by and dispatching of a bald man sitting in a wheelchair with a white cat in a smokestack, the message was clear: that contractually complex character is dead, and they didn’t need him anymore. ![]() Nowhere was that clearer than in the bold statement they made in the prologue to For Your Eyes Only. ![]() Even Albert Broccoli and EON Productions, the parties that practically ran the show with MGM, thought it to be so. It seemed that the true James Bond series would never see SPECTRE again in its lifetime. If the film had progressed, there would have been a chance that either Timothy Dalton or Liam Neeson would have played the role of Bond. But, much as McClory prevented MGM from using SPECTRE and Blofeld for The Spy Who Loved Me, the studio was able to successfully prevent Kevin McClory from achieving his goal, through a deal with Sony. With Sony spurring him on in hopes it could create further competition with its own James Bond franchise. The second, and final, time that Kevin McClory would try to remake his intellectual property was with the film known as Warhead 2000 A.D. In the end, the two films only saw a $27.5 million difference in their grosses, with Roger Moore’s official James Bond movie winning out. Ian Fleming’s estate attempted to prevent such a race, but lost their bid to stop the film’s release. With this film being released in the same year as the official Bond series’ Octopussy, there was obviously a competition between the two films. And oddly enough, Sean Connery was convinced to play the character of 007 yet again, after famously saying he’d never return after Diamonds Are Forever. The first was 1983’s Never Say Never Again, in which James Bond and Ernst Stavro Blofeld fought for custody of two nuclear warheads yet again. Sure enough, Kevin McClory would go on to two more attempts at remaking Thunderball in his own way image. With the rights firmly in his hands, it was only a matter of time before he tried again. Though turnabout was fair play at that same point in Bond history, as Kevin McClory and Sean Connery had worked on a story entitled Warhead, which would be the first of several attempts to revive Thunderball in his own image. Instead of fighting another court battle to continue, the film was altered to omit the organization and its leader, opting instead for an original character, shipping magnate Karl Stromberg, as its villain. While there were intentions to use Blofeld and his criminal enterprise in 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me, McClory was ready with another injunction to prevent this from happening. In the end, while the matter wasn’t officially resolved, Ernst Stavro Blofeld would make his final appearance in Diamonds Are Forever, with SPECTRE not even being named in the film at all. With Kevin McClory owning the rights to Thunderball, this kind of threw the question of who created SPECTRE into the air, with McClory and Ian Fleming being the two parties the issue landed in-between. ![]()
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