Casino Royale is a 2006 spy thriller film, the twenty-first in the James Bond series by Eon Productions, the third screen adaptation of Ian Fleming's 1953 novel of the same name, and the first to star Daniel Craig as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond.
The second entry in the film series to be directed by Martin Campbell, Casino Royales screenplay was written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis; the film co-stars Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench and Jeffrey Wright. In the film, Bond is on a mission to bankrupt the terrorism financier Le Chiffre (Mikkelsen) in a high-stakes poker game at the Casino Royale in Montenegro.
It is also the first Bond film not to be part of the franchise's original loose continuity. Following Die Another Day (2002), Eon decided to reboot the franchise, attempting to provide a realistic and darker exploration of a less experienced and more vulnerable Bond. Casting involved a widespread search for a new actor to succeed Pierce Brosnan as Bond; the choice of Daniel Craig, announced in October 2005, initially proved controversial. Principal photography took place in the Bahamas, Italy, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic, with interior sets built at Pinewood Studios and Barrandov Studios, from January to July 2006. The film features primarily practical stuntwork as opposed to the computer-generated placements seen in other Bond films.
Casino Royale premiered at the Odeon Leicester Square on 14 November 2006, and was theatrically released first in the United Kingdom on 16 November, and in the United States a day later, by Sony Pictures Releasing under the Columbia Pictures banner, the first Bond film to do so. The film received critical acclaim, with praise for Craig's reinvention of the character and the departure from the tropes of previous Bond films. It grossed over $ worldwide, becoming the fourth highest-grossing film of 2006 and the highest-grossing James Bond film until the release of Skyfall (2012). A sequel, Quantum of Solace, was released in 2008.
Plot
MI6 operative James Bond is promoted to 00 agent after assassinating traitorous MI6 section chief Dryden and his contact in Prague. In Uganda, Mr. White introduces Steven Obanno, a commander of the Lord's Resistance Army, to Le Chiffre, an Albanian private banker to terrorists. Obanno entrusts Le Chiffre with $100million to invest. Planning a terrorist attack on aerospace manufacturer Skyfleet, Le Chiffre uses Obanno's money to short the company's stock.
In Madagascar, Bond destroys an embassy while capturing and then killing a bomb maker named Mollaka. M, the head of MI6, chastises Bond for causing an international incident and ignoring her orders to take Mollaka alive. Information on Mollaka's phone leads Bond to corrupt Greek official Alex Dimitrios, who had hired Mollaka at Le Chiffre's request to bomb Skyfleet's prototype airliner. In the Bahamas, Bond seduces Dimitrios' wife and learns that he is going to Miami International Airport. He follows Dimitrios there and kills him, then chases down the new bomber Dimitrios had hired and prevents the destruction of the airliner. With Skyfleet's prototype secure, Le Chiffre's stock shorting scheme fails, losing over $100 million.
To recoup his clients' money, Le Chiffre organises a Texas hold 'em tournament at the Casino Royale in Montenegro. MI6 enters Bond—the agency's best poker player—in the tournament, believing a defeat will force Le Chiffre to seek asylum with the British government in exchange for information on his clients. Bond is paired with Vesper Lynd, a British Treasury agent overseeing the $10million buy-in. They meet their contact, French secret service agent René Mathis, in Montenegro. Obanno, furious over his failed investment, threatens Le Chiffre, but allows him to continue playing to win back the money. Obanno and his bodyguard discover and attack an eavesdropping Bond, who kills them both.
Bond grows confident when he detects Le Chiffre's tell, but loses his $10million stake after Le Chiffre is tipped off. Vesper refuses to authorise an additional $5 million for Bond to continue, but fellow player and CIA agent Felix Leiter stakes Bond the money in exchange for letting the CIA arrest Le Chiffre. Le Chiffre's lover, Valenka, poisons Bond's drink, but Vesper rescues him. Bond returns to the game and wins the tournament. A desperate Le Chiffre kidnaps Vesper to trap Bond and takes them to an abandoned ship. He tortures Bond by slamming a rope with a weight attached to it into Bond's groin in order to get Bond to reveal the password to the bank account holding his winnings, but Bond resists. Mr White bursts in and kills Le Chiffre, but spares Bond and Vesper.
Bond awakens in hospital and recovers with Vesper at his side. He has Mathis arrested, believing that he had tipped off Le Chiffre about his tell. Bond falls in love with Vesper and resigns from MI6; the couple sail to Venice. When M reveals that his winnings were never transferred to the British treasury, Bond realizes that Vesper has betrayed him and he tracks her to an exchange of the money. Gunmen spot him and take her captive inside a gutted Venetian palace undergoing restoration and supported by large flotation devices. Bond destroys the flotation devices, causing the palace to lurch and sink into the Grand Canal. While he kills the shooters, Vesper is trapped in an elevator cage as it submerges. Bond dives in to rescue her, but she locks herself in to prevent him and she drowns. Bond later fails to resuscitate her, and White escapes with the money.
M informs Bond, who has returned to service, that the organization behind Le Chiffre threatened to kill Vesper's lover unless she became a double agent. When Bond denounces Vesper as a traitor, M reasons that she likely made a deal with White by trading the winnings for Bond's life. Realizing Vesper left her phone to help him, Bond checks her contacts and locates White at an estate in Lake Como. He shoots White in the leg to disable him and introduces himself: "The name's Bond, James Bond."
Cast
Production
Development Casino Royale had been produced as a 1954 television episode starring Barry Nelson as Bond and Peter Lorre as the villain Le Chiffre, as well as a 1967 ensemble satirical film starring David Niven, Peter Sellers and Woody Allen. Eon Productions gained the rights to Casino Royale in 1999 after Sony Pictures exchanged them for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's rights to Spider-Man. Director Quentin Tarantino expressed interest in making an adaptation of Casino Royale, keeping Brosnan as Bond, but Eon was not interested. He claims to have worked behind the scenes with the Fleming family after doing Pulp Fiction, intent on making a Casino Royale set in the 1960s with no connections to the Eon films, and believed this was the reason why filmmakers finally went ahead with Casino Royale.
In March 2004, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade began writing a screenplay for Pierce Brosnan as Bond, aiming to bring back the flavour of Ian Fleming's original Bond novels. An early draft featured Bond backpacking in Madagascar and playing chess with Lord Lucan. As the drafts became closer to being finalised, the opening scene in which Bond earns his 00 licence was originally going to consist of an adaptation of either the short stories "The Hildebrand Rarity" or "007 in New York". While trying to use the story of the latter, featuring Bond meeting former secret service staffer Solange, the writers decided to reuse her name for the first woman Bond encounters. Producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson thought that "Die Another Day had become too fantastical", feeling the next film should be more realistic. Later that same year, Sony led a consortium that purchased MGM, allowing Sony to gain distribution rights starting with the film. Broccoli also felt that the "frivolity" of the preceding films was not appropriate after the 9/11 attacks.
In February 2005 Martin Campbell, who previously directed GoldenEye (1995), was announced as the film's director. Campbell was the third director considered for the movie, after producer Chris McGurk suggested Matthew Vaughn, who Broccoli and Wilson thought to not have enough experience, and Eon sent the book and script to Roger Michell, who declined the invite. Vaughn later said that while Eon never invited him, he was contacted by MGM about the film. Campbell felt the script draft needed a rewrite, and suggested hiring Paul Haggis, whose main contribution was to rewrite the climax of the film. Haggis explained, "the draft that was there was very faithful to the book and there was a confession, so in the original draft, the character confessed and killed herself. She then sent Bond to chase after the villains; Bond chased the villains into the house. I don't know why but I thought that Vesper had to be in the sinking house and Bond has to want to kill her and then try and save her." Haggis also said they wanted "to do for Bond what Batman Begins did for Batman". Haggis started working in August 2005 and spent six weeks writing, two with each act.
Eon believed that it had relied too heavily on computer-generated imagery effects in the more recent films, particularly Die Another Day, and was keen to accomplish the stunts in Casino Royale "the old fashioned way". In keeping with this drive for more realism, screenwriters Purvis, Wade and Haggis wanted the script to follow as closely as possible the original 1953 novel, keeping Fleming's darker storyline and characterisation of Bond. Campbell declared that the only element of the novel that could not be used was the Cold War setting featuring SMERSH as the antagonists, and "pretty much the last 2/3rds of the movie will be like the book". Purvis and Wade said the first concept they had to figure out was how to update Le Chiffre without the Soviet backstory, landing on a banker financing terrorism. The predecessor concept to the bombing of the Skyfleet jet was a hijacking of a cruise ship in Cape Town. The location of Casino Royale itself was changed from Northern France to an unnamed city in Montenegro, "somewhere that seemed to be out of reach of the international banking authorities". Due to copyright issues related to the ownership of Thunderball, the organisation of which Mr. White is a part is not initially established as SPECTRE. (This would later be retconned in the titular 2015 film.)
Casting Pierce Brosnan fulfilled his original contract for four Bond films with Die Another Day (2002), and the producers invited him to return for a fifth film and was in negotiations to star in Casino Royale. Screenwriters Purvis and Wade confirmed that their Casino Royale script was written with Brosnan in mind, before they realised the story worked better with a young man, restarting the story of Bond. Yet while Brosnan was working on After the Sunset in The Bahamas, his agent informed him that negotiations had broken down with Eon Productions. The producers were not quite sure what they wanted to do, and contacted Brosnan the following week. During their phone conversation, Brosnan asked if he still had the role. Broccoli began to cry and responded, "We're so sorry", while Wilson was stoic and said, "You were a great James Bond". Later reports cited Brosnan's salary request as the reason he lost the role.