Bond Films (Virgin Film) - Softcover

Eon Productions' James Bond film series is the longest-running and most financially successful movie franchise in history. When, at the beginning of the 60s, producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R 'Cubby' Broccoli acquired the screen rights to the novels of ageing naval intelligence officer Ian Fleming, even they couldn't have predicted how long their series would run - its hero outliving all three of them, surviving imitators, parodies and even two rival Bond film productions, to emerge into a new century revered as an icon and more popular than ever. From Dr. No in 1962 through to Die Another Day, James Bond's cinematic adventures have covered forty years of film-making and encompassed six lead actors, frequent legal entanglements, dozens of beautiful girls and innumerable changes both in film-making and in the world in which the films were produced and released. Using the format of previous books in the Virgin Film series, this indispensable and unofficial guide discusses each movie in turn, examining how each was a product of its own time, and looking at how each was affected by the behind-the-scenes personnel drafted in to help 007 through his many assignments. Using categories such as Source to Screen, Culture Vulture, Director and Crew and Fashion Victims, it also includes an ongoing total of on-screen deaths, martinis ordered and successful seductions, making it the ultimate guide to the film career of the world's best-loved secret agent.

Jim Smith was the co-author of Soul Searching: An Unofficial Guide To The Life and Trials of Ally McBeal and Tim Burton (also in the Virgin Film series) and author of Manhattan Dating Game: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Sex and the City. He has written about television for a variety of publications and is also a regular film reviewer, occasionally also writing features for Film Review. Steve Lavington was the assistant film editor of Pi magazine for three years.