James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me include the Bond girl Anya Amasova and her lover Sergei Borzov, as well as Colonel-General Nikitin, a character from Fleming's novel "From Russia, with Love" who has since become head of the KGB. Other differences include the villain, Karl Stromberg, instead being named as Sigmund Stromberg. The change of Stromberg's given name, as well as the existence of SMERSH, may be in some way due to the controversy over "Thunderball", in which Kevin McClory was made aware of certain plot points of the film "The Spy Who Loved Me". At one point the villain of the film was to be
James Bond in film as Bond's alter ego, "a super-villain of the stature of Bond himself". Tensions between Mankiewicz and Guy Hamilton led to Richard Maibaum taking over scripting duties. Maibaum, who had worked on six Bond films previously, delivered his own draft based on Mankiewicz's work. Broccoli's stepson Michael G. Wilson researched solar power to create the MacGuffin of the "Solex Agitator". While "Live and Let Die" had borrowed heavily from the blaxploitation genre, "The Man with the Golden Gun" borrowed from the martial arts genre that was popular in the 1970s. On 6 November 1973 filming commenced at the RMS "Queen Elizabeth",