James Bond

James Bond is a fictional character created by the novelist Ian Fleming in 1953. Bond is a British secret agent working for MI6 who also answers to his codename, 007. He has been portrayed on film by the actors Sean Connery, David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig, in twenty-seven productions. All the films but two were made by Eon Productions. Eon now holds the full adaptation rights to all of Fleming's Bond novels .

In 1961 the producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman joined forces to purchase the filming rights to Fleming's novels. They founded the production company Eon Productions and, with financial backing by United Artists, began working on Dr. No, which was directed by Terence Young and featured Connery as Bond. Following Dr. No's release in 1962, Broccoli and Saltzman created the holding company Danjaq to ensure future productions in the James Bond film series. With a combined gross of nearly $7 billion to date, the films produced by Eon constitute the fourth-highest-grossing film series, behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars and Wizarding World films.

When Broccoli and Saltzman bought the rights to existing and future Fleming titles, it did not include Casino Royale, which had already been sold to producer Gregory Ratoff, with the story having been adapted for television in 1954. After Ratoff's death, the rights were passed on to Charles K. Feldman who subsequently produced the satirical Bond spoof Casino Royale in 1967. A legal case ensured that the film rights to the novel Thunderball were held by Kevin McClory as he, Fleming and the scriptwriter Jack Whittingham had written a film script upon which the novel was based. Although Eon Productions and McClory joined forces to produce Thunderball, McClory still retained the rights to the story and adapted Thunderball into 1983's Never Say Never Again.The current distribution rights to both of those films are held by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio which distributes Eon's regular series.