Just wondering, now that the new “Casino Royale” movie in in the works with a new JB. I’m positive that three separate treatments of a single Ian Fleming book is a record, but for the life of me, I cannot think of any other James Bond titles that had even two versions; or, for that matter, any of Ian Fleming’s other books either.
Know of any other two-fers I may not have heard of?
Did I miss a take. The only one I’ve seen was the comedy version, with David Niven, Woody Allen and Peter Sellers. Was there a TV version or something?
I thought that Thunderball basically got remade as Never Say Never Again.
Aside from the messy example of Thunderball/Never Say Never Again, if you allow non-movie adaptations then you have to start taking into account stuff like the early Bob Holness radio version of Moonraker.
Top of my head:
*Showboat *X 3
Three Godfathers X 4
. . . all I got for now.
Yes- Casino Royale was filmed in 1954 as part of a CBS ensemble show entitled Climax!
There was, an American version in 1954 starring Barry Nelson as Bond and Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre. It was an episode of an anthology show called “Climax!” and it was hoped that the episode would lead to a James Bond TV series.
The remake kings would still be FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA, though… God only knows how many versions there are, and that’s ignoring “Son of the Wolfman Meets Daughter of Dracula” and such.
Well, Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me were essentially the same movie…
I think Romeo and Juliet has been interpreted a time or two.
Ditto Goldfinger and A View to a Kill
Is the OP limiting itself only to Ian Fleming material? It is confusing.
If we’re departing from the film medium, then Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has been both a movie and a stage musical.
How about another remake of Beau Geste?
I’d guess there are more than three Phantoms of the Opera. I know of two offhand.
Sorry. Yes, I was just wondering about Ian Fleming’s stuff, mainly James Bond. But the responses are very interesting and informative.
OT is sometime real gooood. In fact, until I read Bryan Ekers’ post, I never really thought about why I did not like “The Spy Who Loved Me” very much. Perhaps this is it. I can not remember reading the novel, but I think that, yes, the movies were pretty close–now that I think about that.
(TMI Stuff: The posts about the 1954 TV thing was exactly why I did not say “movies” in my OP. I didn’t know if this would be considered a “movie” or not. But this is exactly what prompted my post. The first JB film I saw, when I told my mom what we were going to see, she made a comment to the effect of, “Oh, yes. That James Bond guy. We saw that on TV about 10 years ago.” If not for that comment, I never would have searched and found out that there was a much earlier version of “Casino Royale” that I was much too young to have remembered. So, I wondered if there was other, arcane, stuff out there that I hadn’t heard about. I wasn’t trying to be tricky, and probably should have included the ‘why’ of my question, sorry. But by all means keep 'em coming, and thanks again.)
Apologies. I did not mean to leave this comment out. It is funny, but I also did not like “A View to a Kill” much, either. Perhaps for the same reason I posted above.
I should probably add that the books were all different, but after the first 3 or 4 JB movies, the rest do tend to the same…well…“sameness.” Makes it hard to keep 'em apart.
Perhaps the new Goldfinger will reverse this trend. I understand it will be much less Sci-Fi and more down to earth. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Thank you bonzer! ExACTly the kind of stuff I was looking for! Hey, the second person to play JB. Radio or TV or movies. Talk about a real good trivia question if phrased right…
(sorry again. I should have less enthusiatic and taken my time & combines all of this into one post. My bad and I’ll do better.)
The novel titled The Spy Who Loved Me has only the name in common with the film. The novel is written in first-person, through the eyes of a young French-Canadian woman who only meets Bond in the last third of the story, after a chance encounter in an upstate New York motel.
The lack of submarines and seven-foot metal-toothed assassins distracts a little.
While it’s sort of mentioned in the IMDb link I gave, it’s worth adding that the main reason why this South African version of Moonraker is remembered in Britain is that Holness became a cult figure on TV here as the presenter of the teatime teen quiz Blockbusters. He’s a nostalgia icon amongst those of us between, say, 20-40 years old.
Indeed, there was a period where “who was the first person to play James Bond” was a widespread trivia question in the UK, the astonishing answer supposedly being “Bob Holness”. The priority of Barry Nelson in the 1954 Casino Royale has however gradually sunk in, though Holness’s fame as “the second person to play James Bond” does definitely linger in British popular culture.
All together now: “I’ll have a P, Bob” and “I’ll have an E, Bob”.
Goldfinger was Sci-fi? I thought it was fairly plausible.
I still hold the view that Bond is passe.
He was a product of the Cold War, and has no place in the post-Soviet world.
I recall the novels very fondly, but I’ll always imagine him watching the Soviet Union vote itsself out of existance on TV, smile once with grim satisfaction at the work of a lifetime done well, and then die of a heart attack in the arms of a beautiful blonde. All those cigarettes, all that booze.