Where to watch Thunderball (1965)

Trivia & production notes

• Thunderball was originally intended to be the first James Bond film, but legal disputes over rights that began in 1961 delayed its production for years.
• Producer Broccoli pursued Julie Christie, Raquel Welch, and Faye Dunaway for the role of Domino Derval before eventually casting Claudine Auger, a former Miss France.
• Although Claudine Auger was cast as Domino, her dialogue was entirely dubbed by Nikki van der Zyl, who had provided voices for previous Bond girls.
• Luciana Paluzzi, who auditioned for the role of Domino, was instead cast as villain Fiona, with the character's surname changed from Kelly to Volpe to match her Italian heritage.
• Guy Hamilton turned down the opportunity to direct Thunderball because he felt creatively drained after completing Goldfinger.
• About a quarter of Thunderball consists of underwater scenes, requiring four separate filming units to complete production.
• Sean Connery insisted on a Plexiglas partition to protect him during shark pool scenes, but one shark breached the barrier and Connery had to flee the pool.
• The jet pack featured in Thunderball was a real, functional device invented for the United States Army that lasted only a couple of minutes in operation.
• A stuntman named Bill Cummings demanded an extra fee of £250 to double for Largo's sidekick Quist in the shark pool sequence due to the extreme danger.
• During final filming in Nassau, special-effects supervisor John Stears detonated an experimental rocket fuel on Largo's yacht with such force that the explosion shattered windows roughly 30 miles away on Bay Street.

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