Thunderball (novel) "Daily Express" strip was cut short on the order of its owner, Lord Beaverbrook, after Ian Fleming signed an agreement with "The Sunday Times" to publish a short story. On screen, "Thunderball" was released in 1965 as the fourth film in the Eon Productions series, with Sean Connery as James Bond. The second adaptation, "Never Say Never Again", was released as an independent production in 1983 also starring Connery as Bond and was produced by Kevin McClory. BBC Radio 4 aired an adaptation in December 2016, directed by Martin Jarvis. It starred Toby Stephens as Bond and Tom Conti as
James Bond in film James Bond in film The James Bond film series is a British series of spy films based on the fictional character of MI6 agent James Bond, "007", who originally appeared in a series of books by Ian Fleming. It is one of the longest continually-running film series in history, having been in on-going production from 1962 to the present (with a six-year hiatus between 1989 and 1995). In that time Eon Productions has produced 24 films, most of them at Pinewood Studios. With a combined gross of over $7 billion to date, the films produced by Eon constitute the fourth-highest-grossing