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 (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Fleming commissioned a sketch to show how he saw Bond; illustrator John McLusky considered Fleming's version too "outdated" and "pre-war" and changed Bond to give him a more masculine look.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