Thunderball (film) Thunderball (film) Thunderball is a 1965 British spy film and the fourth in the "James Bond" series produced by Eon Productions, starring Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. It is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Ian Fleming, which in turn was based on an original screenplay by Jack Whittingham. It was directed by Terence Young, with its screenplay by Richard Maibaum and John Hopkins. The movie would have been the first of the Bond series if not for legal disputes over copyright issues. The film follows Bond's mission to find two NATO
James Bond (literary character) Fleming commissioned a sketch to show how he saw Bond; illustrator John McLusky considered Fleming's version too "outdated" and "pre-war" and changed Bond to give him a more masculine look. In 1962 Eon Productions, the company of Canadian Harry Saltzman and American Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli released the first cinema adaptation of an Ian Fleming novel, "Dr. No", featuring Sean Connery as 007. Connery was the first of seven actors to play Bond on the cinema screen, six of whom appeared in the Eon series of films. As well as looking different, each of the actors has interpreted the role