Never Say Never Again, released in the fall of 1983, on the other hand, is very much a James Bond film, even though a rival production company, Taliafilm, is responsible for the picture. Producer Jack Schwartzman made it possible when he purchased a license to make one James Bond based on "The Film Scripts" and the THUNDERBALL film rights originally assigned to Kevin McClory from Paradise Film Productions III of Nassau, Bahamas. Schwartzman, with experience as a Hollywood lawyer, successfully overcame the tremendous legal obstacles plaguing the production of the film. After obtaining foreign distribution rights, Schwartzman received backing from Warner Brothers.
The producers promised a different sort of Bond film from the Eon series; hopefully, the new film would concentrate more on character development and would be played straight. The film's obvious draw was the return of Sean Connery to the role of agent 007. Connery took a big risk with the film. No matter how it was received, it would be looked at by the public and critics as "Sean Connery's New Bond Film"—its success rested on his shoulders. Therefore, Connery had, much say in the production and approved the script as well as each shot. He reportedly worked very closely with director Irvin Kershner.
Shooting began in October 1982 in the south of France and continued in the Bahamas. The film was in the can by the spring of 1983 and a few pickup shots were filmed during the summer. Apogee Inc. in Los Angeles was responsible for the optical and visual effects.
Naturally, there were many things which the producers could not include in the film for legal reasons. There was no opening gun-barrel logo (the trademark is owned by United Artists/Eon), and no "James Bond Theme" music. Although perhaps a bit confusing to the uninformed viewer expecting a traditional Bond film, this had no detrimental effect at all on the picture.
The screenplay by Lorenzo Semple, Jr., based on the original story by Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham, and Ian Fleming, incorporates the basic Thunderball plot with many deviations. (Reportedly, Sean Connery and Irvin Kershner had a hand in the script as well.) Most of the characters in the story are the same with slight variations in their names (for example, Largo is Maximillian Largo rather than Emilio Largo). Two atomic bombs are abducted by SPECTRE and are used to hold the world at ransom, but the methods employed by SPECTRE to steal the bombs are quite different Here, Domino's brother, now named Jack Petachi, has been brainwashed by SPECTRE and has undergone surgery on his right eye. An exact replica of the retina of the right eye belonging to the President of the United States has been implanted in Petachi's head. This will allow Petachi to override a security code protecting the device which arms atomic weapons on NATO bases—supposedly, only the president should be able to look into a telescope-like contraption which makes a positive identification clearance. Once Petachi has broken the security, he arms the two atomic missiles and programs them to veer off course from a test flight so that they will land in the Bahamas. There is no Vulcan aircraft, and all the sabotaging is done on the base in England.