The World Is Not Enough

Did You Know?

• Bond novelist Raymond Benson wrote a novelisation of the film that gave the cigar girl/assassin the name Giulietta da Vinci and retained a scene cut from the film.
• Versions of The World Is Not Enough for the PC and PlayStation 2 were planned but cancelled; their game engine was used as the foundation for James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire.

Plot

In Bilbao, James Bond retrieves money for Sir Robert King, a British oil tycoon and friend of M. The money is revealed to be laced with explosives that kill King at MI6 headquarters. Bond chases the assassin by boat on the Thames to the Millennium Dome, where she dies by blowing up her hot air balloon. The recovered money is traced to Renard, a KGB agent turned anarchist terrorist with a bullet lodged in his brain that makes him immune to pain but will eventually kill him.

M assigns Bond to protect King's daughter Elektra, whom Renard had previously abducted and held for ransom. Bond flies to Azerbaijan, where Elektra oversees construction of an oil pipeline. During a tour of the pipeline's route, they are attacked by a hit squad on snowmobiles. Bond visits Valentin Zukovsky at a casino and discovers that Elektra's head of security, Sasha Davidov, is secretly in league with Renard.

Bond kills Davidov and boards a plane to an ex-Soviet ICBM base in Kazakhstan. There he meets American nuclear physicist Dr. Christmas Jones. Renard removes the GPS locator card and weapons-grade plutonium core from a nuclear warhead. Bond and Jones escape the exploding silo with the locator card.

Cast

Pierce Brosnan stars as James Bond, MI6 agent 007. Sophie Marceau plays Elektra King, an oil heiress who appears to be a target of the world's most wanted terrorist, Renard. M orders Bond to protect her, though he suspects she is hiding something. Before Marceau was cast, Sharon Stone and Vera Farmiga were considered for the role after Barbara Broccoli saw Marceau in Firelight.

Robert Carlyle portrays Victor "Renard" Zokas, a former KGB agent turned high-tech terrorist who once kidnapped Elektra. A bullet lodged in his brain from a failed assassination attempt leaves him unable to feel pain while slowly killing him. Javier Bardem and Jean Reno were offered the role before Carlyle. Denise Richards plays Dr. Christmas Jones, an American nuclear physicist.

Richards liked the part for being "brainy," "athletic," and having "depth of character." The character was originally a French-Polynesian insurance investigator, but the studio changed her nationality after Marceau was cast. Tiffani Thiessen also auditioned. Robbie Coltrane reprises his GoldenEye role as Valentin Zukovsky, a former Russian mafia boss and casino owner.

Desmond Llewelyn appears as Q, MI6's quartermaster, in his final performance; he died in a car crash shortly after the film's release. Maria Grazia Cucinotta plays the "Cigar Girl," a lone hitwoman. Samantha Bond is Miss Moneypenny, and Michael Kitchen is Bill Tanner.

Production

In November 1997, Barbara Broccoli watched a news report on Nightline about oil companies vying for control of Caspian Sea oil reserves and suggested controlling the only pipeline from the Caspian to the West as a villain motivation. Screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade were hired after their work on Plunkett & Macleane; they incorporated material from the abandoned Bond screenplay Reunion with Death. Joe Dante and later Peter Jackson were initially offered the director role; Barbara Broccoli disliked Jackson's The Frighteners.

Alfonso Cuarón nearly accepted the director role. The producers hired Michael Apted, whose work with Sissy Spacek, Sigourney Weaver and Jodie Foster had earned those actresses Oscar nominations. Apted's then-wife Dana Stevens did an uncredited rewrite to strengthen female characters, before Bruce Feirstein was hired to work on Bond's role. The film was initially rumoured to be titled Bond 2000; other rumoured titles included Death Waits for No Man, Fire and Ice, Pressure Point and Dangerously Yours.

The eventual title The World Is Not Enough is an English translation of the Latin phrase Orbis non sufficit, the motto of Bond's supposed real-world ancestor Sir Thomas Bond.

Release and reception

The World Is Not Enough premiered on 19 November 1999 in the United States and on 26 November 1999 in the United Kingdom, with its world premiere on 8 November 1999 at the Fox Bruin Theater in Los Angeles. MGM signed a marketing partnership with MTV, which broadcast over 100 hours of Bond-related programmes after the film's release. The film opened at the top of the North American box office with $35.5 million during its opening weekend, remaining in that spot until Toy Story 2 took over in its second weekend.

Its final worldwide gross was $361.7 million, with $126 million in the United States, making it the highest-grossing James Bond film at the time until Die Another Day. The film was selected for the first round of nominations for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects but did not reach final nominations. It was nominated for a Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film Saturn Award; Pierce Brosnan won the Empire Award and the Blockbuster Entertainment Award as Best Actor; David Arnold won a BMI Film Music Award.

Denise Richards won the Golden Raspberry for Worst Supporting Actress, and she and Brosnan were nominated for Worst Screen Couple.