James Bond

The James Bond series focuses on James Bond, a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have written authorised Bond novels or novelisations: Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver, William Boyd, and Anthony Horowitz. The latest novel is With a Mind to Kill by Anthony Horowitz, published in May 2022. Additionally Charlie Higson wrote a series on a young James Bond, and Kate Westbrook wrote three novels based on the diaries of a recurring series character, Moneypenny. The character—also known by the code number 007 (pronounced "double-oh-seven")—has also been adapted for television, radio, comic strip, video games and film. The films are one of the longest continually running film series and have grossed over US$7.04 billion in total at the box office, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film series to date, which started in 1962 with Dr. No, starring Sean Connery as Bond. , there have been twenty-five films in the Eon Productions series. The most recent Bond film, No Time to Die (2021), stars Daniel Craig in his fifth portrayal of Bond; he is the sixth actor to play Bond in the Eon series. There have also been two independent Bond film productions: Casino Royale (a 1967 spoof starring David Niven) and Never Say Never Again (a 1983 remake of an earlier Eon-produced film, 1965's Thunderball, both starring Connery). In 2015, the series was estimated to be worth$19.9 billion in total (based on box-office grosses, DVD sales and merchandise tie-ins), making James Bond one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time. Casino Royale has also been adapted for television, as a one-hour show in 1954 as part of the CBS series Climax!. The Bond films are renowned for a number of features, including their soundtracks, with the theme songs having received Academy Award nominations on several occasions, and three wins.