The James Bond franchise is filled with hits and misses — but also never-weres.

In the gallery below, we're looking at six James Bond movies that were planned but never completed and three others that could have been helmed by some of the most famous directors of all time.

The saga surrounding Thunderball plays a major role in the history of unmade James Bond films. It was originally conceived as a movie in the late '50s by 007 creator Ian Fleming, Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham; Alfred Hitchcock was asked to direct but refused. When Fleming turned the story into a novel without crediting the others, they sued and McClory wound up with the rights to make his own version of Thunderball. His attempt in the mid-'70s brought back Sean Connery as both the star and co-writer of Warhead. (McClory was credited as a producer on the 1965 Thunderball directed by Terence Young.) Although McClory eventually got to make his Bond film, 1983's Never Say Never Again, he tried updating the Warhead script for the '90s, but it was quashed by a lawsuit.

On two occasions ideas from existing scripts were re-worked. The first, The Property of a Lady, was announced as Timothy Dalton's third film as 007, but the actor's contract ran out before it could get made and GoldenEye retained a couple of plot elements. Similarly, the climax of Skyfall was pulled from a rejected script called Once Upon a Spy co-penned by acclaimed screenwriter Peter Morgan.)

Successful movie franchises often spin characters off into their own stories, and although James Bond has not had any to date, it hasn't been for a lack of trying. Barbara Broccoli, who took over her father Albert's role at Eon, was interested in using Halle Berry's star power to create a movie based on Jinx, the character the Academy Award-winning actress played in Die Another Day, but distributor MGM nixed the idea. More recently, there has been a discussion to turn Naomie Harris' Eve Moneypenny into a movie, but there has been no movement on it as of press time.

Two of cinema's most celebrated directors wanted to make James Bond movies. In the '70s, Steven Spielberg twice offered up his services to Eon Productions but was turned down on both occasions. Three decades later, Quentin Tarantino approached the studio with an idea for Casino Royale that would restore some of the '60s glamour to the series, but the studio rejected him. While the films eventually got made with other directors, it's tempting to imagine how they could have worked their unique visions into the franchise.

Read more about all of these below.

 

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