Where to watch Moonraker (1979)

Trivia & production notes

• Roger Moore's contract with Eon Productions shifted from a guaranteed three-film deal to a film-by-film basis starting with Moonraker.
• James Mason was originally set to play Hugo Drax, but French actor Michael Lonsdale was cast after the film became a British-French co-production to meet treaty requirements.
• Lewis Gilbert cast Lois Chiles as Holly Goodhead after meeting her on a flight and believing she was perfect for the role, replacing Jaclyn Smith who had scheduling conflicts with Charlie's Angels.
• Richard Kiel's character Jaws was transformed from a villain into Bond's ally after director Lewis Gilbert received fan mail from children asking why Jaws couldn't be a good guy.
• Blanche Ravalec, cast as Dolly, was much shorter than Richard Kiel as Jaws, a height difference the producers only accepted after learning Kiel's own wife was similarly petite.
• Production moved from Pinewood Studios to French studios because of high British taxation at the time, with only cable car interiors and space battle scenes filmed at Pinewood.
• Ken Adam's sets required over 222,000 man-hours to construct, representing the largest sets ever built in France at that time.
• The famous skydiving sequence without a parachute took 88 total skydives to complete and required custom-sewn velcro costumes to allow hidden parachutes to deploy.
• Moonraker was selected over For Your Eyes Only as the next Bond film because the producers wanted to capitalize on the popularity of science fiction following Star Wars in 1977.
• Derek Meddings' special effects team created the climactic space station disintegration by shooting a miniature model with shotguns since the Space Shuttle program had not yet launched.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Moonraker (film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.