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
James Bond filmography boring". After a hiatus of one film—"On Her Majesty's Secret Service", in which George Lazenby played Bond—Connery returned to the role for "Diamonds Are Forever" after David Picker, the head of United Artists, made it clear that Connery was to be enticed back to the role and that money was no object. When approached about resuming the role of Bond, Connery demanded—and received—a fee of £1.25 million (£ million in pounds), 12.5% of the gross profits and, as a further enticement, United Artists offered to back two films of his choice. His performance received mixed reviews, with Raymond Benson considering