EON Productions

EON Productions is a film production company known for producing the James Bond film series. The company is based in London's Piccadilly and also operates from Pinewood Studios in the United Kingdom. It is a subsidiary of Danjaq LLC, the holding company responsible for the copyright and trademarks to the Bond characters and elements on screen.

Bond films

EON was started by film producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman in 1961. In 1975 after nine Bond films, Harry Saltzman sold his shares of Danjaq to United Artists (the then-current Bond series distributor). Although Albert R. Broccoli died in 1996, EON Productions is still owned by the Broccoli family, specifically Albert R. Broccoli's daughter, Barbara Broccoli, and his stepson, Michael G. Wilson, who are the current producers of the James Bond films.

The trademarks for the film properties (beginning with Dr. No) are copyrighted by Danjaq and United Artists Corporation. The latter were bought by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1981: Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace (2006, 2008) were co-distributed with Columbia Pictures.

These EON productions are commonly recognised as "official" James Bond films, whereas the 1954 television adaptation of Casino Royale, the 1967 film spoof Casino Royale and Sean Connery's 1983 remake of Thunderball which was Never Say Never Again, are regarded as "unofficial" because they were not produced by EON and do not form part of the main canon (this also means that they lack familiar elements such as the James Bond Theme music and the opening Gunbarrel sequence).

1. Dr. No (1962)
2. From Russia with Love (1963)
3. Goldfinger (1964)
4. Thunderball (1965)
5. You Only Live Twice (1967)
6. On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
7. Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
8. Live and Let Die (1973)
9. The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
10. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
11. Moonraker (1979)
12. For Your Eyes Only (1981)
13. Octopussy (1983)
14. A View to a Kill (1985)
15. The Living Daylights (1987)
16. Licence to Kill (1989)
17. GoldenEye (1995)
18. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
19. The World Is Not Enough (1999)
20. Die Another Day (2002)
21. Casino Royale (2006)
22. Quantum of Solace (2008)
23. Bond 23 (working title) (2010)

Other productions

Since their first film, Dr. No in 1962, there has only been one film made by EON Productions that wasn't a part of the Bond series: Call Me Bwana, starring Bob Hope. (Though Saltzman and Broccoli produced other films separately and jointly — including the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, also based on a book by Ian Fleming.)

In 2008, EON signed a deal with Columbia Pictures to develop fifteen thrillers and family films outside the Bond franchise, with budgets of up to US$80 million (GBP40 million). The company hopes the move will allow more British writers to establish themselves in the United States.

Games

In 2000, EON productions served a cease-and-desist letter to Cheapass Games to stop them from using the name "Mr. Bond" in the title of their game Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond. In 2004, the game was reissued under the title James Ernest's Totally Renamed Spy Game.

In 2004 Electronic Arts developed a video game with the James Bond licence titled Everything or Nothing, which was thought to be named after the production company. Up until his death, Albert R. Broccoli had always denied that "EON" stood for anything specifically.

References

See also

• James Bond games - list of games authorised by EON Productions and MGM Interactive
• Ian Fleming Publications - administers all of Ian Fleming's literary oeuvre as well as continuation novels by other authors