Warhead 2000 was a proposed non-Eon James Bond film and a second remake of the 1965 film Thunderball. It was to be released theatrically by Sony Pictures under Kevin McClory's rights to the original screenplay of the film.
History[]
Kevin McClory continued to try to make another adaptation of Thunderball after his 1983 film Never Say Never Again. In late 1989, just after the release of EON's film Licence to Kill, McClory announced a new film with the title Warhead 8 teaming up with Jack Whittingham who had also co-wrote the original Thunderball screenplay. The film was to be closer to the original Bond formula than the Bond films of the 1980s and would be based on the original James Bond film scripts written by McClory, Whittingham and Fleming in 1959/60 and parts of the novel Thunderball. No decisions were made on who would play Bond, but film would be shot largely in Australia with locations, including Great Barrier Reef, as well as in Ireland and New York.[1]
By the mid-1990s he approached Sony who, at the time, held the film rights to Casino Royale with the idea of starting a rival Bond franchise to EON Productions after their success in modernising Bond with 1995's GoldenEye. Liam Neeson was eyed for Bond but declined, while former Bond actor Timothy Dalton was also approached to reprise the role.
On October 13, 1997 (two months prior to the release of Tomorrow Never Dies) McClory and Sony officially announced the film and that it was to be a remake of Thunderball.[2]
McClory's ownership of the Thunderball screenplay rights came into question and the project was eventually scrapped in 1999 after Sony settled out of court with MGM/United Artists; Sony ceded any rights to making a James Bond film, in exchange for the rights to Spider-Man from MGM (who had inherited the rights via Cannon Films, after a lengthy legal battle to determine who exactly possessed the rights) Ironically, in 2005 Sony acquired MGM; however, the production and final say over everything involving the film version of James Bond is controlled by EON Productions, Albert R. Broccoli's production company and its parent company Danjaq, LLC.
Prior to Sony's settlement with MGM in 1999, they filed a lawsuit against MGM claiming McClory was the co-author of the cinematic 007 and was owed fees from Danjaq and MGM for all past films. MGM launched a $25 million lawsuit against Sony, and McClory claimed a portion of the $3 billion profits from the Bond series. After a prolonged lawsuit, Sony backed down, and McClory eventually exhausted all legal avenues to pursue. This lawsuit was thrown out in 2000 on the ground that McClory had waited too long to bring his claims. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals later affirmed this decision.
Cast & characters[]
References[]
- ↑ "Third act of ‘Godfather’ in pipeline - On Film", The Press, 13 October 1989, p. 23.
- ↑ Weiner, Rex. "Sony splits Bond market", Variety, October 14, 1997. Retrieved on December 21, 2019.