The Battle for Bond deal with Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli: "Thunderball" (1965) that was released at Christmas. McClory's court victory also entitled him to remake "Thunderball" (1965) as "Never Say Never Again" (1983), again with Sean Connery as James Bond, the cinematic competition Broccoli had tried to legally ban. With the remake, McClory attempted to continue with his own James Bond film series, but was stopped after legal action by Broccoli and MGM. In a later unsuccessful lawsuit, McClory went further and now claimed that he created the cinematic James Bond, and demanded a share of the three billion dollars earned by
O.K. Connery "flair and skill with which the Bond films are made. The script is labored, the direction slow and the acting is barely adequate." In Phil Hardy's book "Science Fiction" (1984), a review noted that "though it's stylishly mounted, the result is a routine Italian spy romp." In an interview in 1996, Lois Maxwell said that Sean Connery, when he learned that she would join the cast, got very angry and started screaming: "You have betrayed me!" and he forgave her when she saved Neil from a fool at the press conference. As a "James Bond rip-off", reaction to the film