James Bond in film Deighton together with Sean Connery to work on a script. The script ran into difficulties after accusations from Eon Productions that the project had gone beyond copyright restrictions, which confined McClory to a film based on the "Thunderball" novel only, and once again the project was deferred. Towards the end of the 1970s developments were reported on the project under the name "James Bond of the Secret Service", but then producer Jack Schwartzman became involved and cleared a number of the legal issues that still surrounded the project and licensed the rights from McClory. With Connery still committed to the
The Man with the Golden Gun (film) film itself: "What Sean Connery used to achieve with a touch of sardonic sadism, Roger Moore conveys with roguish schoolboy charm and the odd, dry quip." Thirkwell also said that Moore "manages to make even this reduced-voltage Bond a character with plenty of sparkle." Judith Crist of "New York Magazine" gave a positive review, saying "the scenery's grand, the lines nice and the gadgetry entertaining", also describing the production as a film that "capture[s] the free-wheeling, whooshing non-sense of early Fleming's fairy tale for grown-ups orientation". Jay Cocks, writing in "Time", focused on gadgets such as Scaramanga's flying car, as