These include an attack on Bond while entering the casino (which is changed from a bomb to an attempted shooting) and even a version of Bond being tortured after the game.

Much of the incidental events from Fleming's original work are in this version too, as well as including one of Le Chiffre's henchmen threatening Bond with a gun hidden in a cane during the game.Įven when incidents from the novel are difficult to do on screen, thanks to network censors, the limitations of live television production or (more likely) both, versions of them still appear. The central plot, of Bond going to a French casino to bankrupt Le Chiffre at the baccarat tables and thus ensure his death at the hands of his Soviet paymasters, is front and center here. Despite being merely an hour in length, the script by Anthony Ellis and Charles Bennett is a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the original novel. Split into three acts, like a stage play, the first screen Bond was shown live on Octoon the anthology series Climax!, a suspense series that had started airing only three weeks before.Ĭoming the better part of a decade before EON's Goldfinger firmly established the image of Bond in the public consciousness, the 1954 Casino Royale is interesting viewing. Ratoff was unable to draw interest from any of the major Hollywood studios at the time, due to the novel's content, but he did draw interest from the American television network CBS, who agreed to broadcasting a hour long live television adaptation of Casino Royale. In the spring of 1954, Fleming initially sold the option for an adaptation to producer Gregory Ratoff for a mere $1,000 (though reports suggest the amount might even have been as little as $600). The first filmed version of Casino Royale, coming just a year after the novel's original publication, was also the first on-screen depiction of James Bond. Indeed before the EON Casino Royale there had already been two other adaptations made decades before. Yet many of those sitting in cinemas, and watching it hence on whatever format, were likely unaware that it was in fact the most adapted Bond novel in terms of screen versions. The first Bond adventure, published back in 1953, was finally adapted by EON in 2006 and served as the debut for Daniel Craig in the role of 007. None of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels took longer to be adapted for the screen by EON Productions than Casino Royale.

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