Badder than Blofeld, greedier than Goldfinger, much more of a menacing multimedia megalomaniac than Elliott Carver, he is, in the eyes of MGM/UA and the Broccoli family, the most evil Bond villain in the 35-year history of James Bond movies: John Calley, once head of United Artists, now the turncoat trying to steal Bond for his new masters, Sony-owned Columbia Pictures. To accomplish his mission, Calley has allied himself with another of 007’s long-standing nemeses, none other than our old friend Kevin McClory.

You all remember McClory, the ne’er-do-well Irish producer who owns the screen rights to “Thunderball”— because of his involvement with, and subsequent lawsuit against, Ian Fleming in the aborted 1959 attempt to make the first James Bond movie — and who periodically trots them out to entice some moneybags or another to back him in yet another scheme to create a new Bond series to rival UA’s. His first attempts, from 1976 until 1983, finally resulted in the flaccid “Thunderball” remake “Never Say Never Again,” but no hint of a series (see FYEO #18, 19, 20, 23). From 1984 to 1988 he tried to interest cartoon studios in an animated “Thunderball,” while claiming he was preparing more live-action Bond pics titled “S.P.E.C.T.R.E.” (note the periods, the way McClory always spells it) or “Warhead 8.” In 1993, he tried to launch a James Bond syndicated TV series—with Pierce Brosnan bruited to star—but that quietly disappeared in the face of fierce resistance from UA and Bond godfather Cubby Broccoli (see FYEO #29, 30).

Now it’s “Warhead 2000 A.D.,” another “Thunderball” remake that likely would have gone nowhere but for this twist of fate: McClory got a Daily Variety reporter to give him a lot of ink in October 1996 discussing his so-called plans for the new picture, and this story happened to catch the attention of one Gareth Wigan, a high-ranking Sony Pictures exec, just as Calley was hastily and furiously leaving his post as president of United Artists, MGM’s only consistently productive and profitable unit. Calley reportedly was livid that he was kept unaware of negotiations that resulted in dreaded Las Vegas wheeler-dealer Kirk Kerkorian taking control of MGM for the third time in a history of destruction that dates to 1969 (see many issues of FYEO). By all accounts, he also considered himself grossly under-compensated.

Calley immediately surfaced as Sony Pictures’ new president, and soon after there were silly rumors everywhere that he wanted to buy Bond from MGM. Both parties denied the stories and no one in his right mind believed MGM would sell its one reliable moneymaker (nor could it be sold without the unlikely acquiescence of Broccoli’s heirs, daughter Barbara and stepson Michael Wilson, now the producers of the Bond films and owners of Danjaq, the company established by Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman to purchase the film rights from Ian Fleming).

But rumors persisted that Calley coveted Bond — he not only headed UA when “Goldeneye” relaunched the series after a painful six-year hiatus, he also was at Warner Bros. in the early ‘80s when that studio released “Never Say Never Again”— and, perhaps more significantly, that he would love to stick it to MGM. Calley finally dropped his bombshell last Oct. 13, announcing that Columbia is teaming with McClory to produce a series of new James Bond movies, with the first planned for release in 1999. Just as he has since 1976, McClory insists he has 10 separate Bond stories he wrote with Fleming and Jack Whittingham in 1959 that can serve as the basis for a series of films, and that they are not just various drafts and treatments of “Thunderball.”

Of course that’s exactly what they are, as UA and Danjaq have always maintained (see the third issue of Goldeneye, the magazine published by the Ian Fleming Foundation, for a detailed look at the development of “Thunderball’s” storyline). MGM President Frank Mancuso called Sony’s plans “delusional.” Sony’s Wigan replied, “Our lawyers have looked into this very carefully, as I'm sure MGM’s lawyers have. It’s not the first time two sets of lawyers have come to different conclusions. Obviously, we would not be saying we intended to make a number of films based on these rights if we didn't think we could.”

Sony’s films, if they are made, will appear only after a long and bloody legal battle. MGM sued, of course, seeking $25 million in damages in a suit filed Nov. 17 against Sony, McClory and, to emphasize the personal nature of the conflict, Calley, labeling him a “disgruntled former executive of United Artists” now making illegal use of trade secrets he learned at UA. MGM execs are convinced Calley timed his Bond announcement to damage the pending release of “Tomorrow Never Dies” and the new owners’ initial public stock offering (which didn't raise as much money as Kerkorian and his partner, Australia’s Seven Television Network, were hoping for).

Sony waited until February to strike back, but their lawyers certainly came up with a novel attack. Sony now seeks a percentage of the estimated $3 billion that UA’s Bond films have brought in over the last 35 years, claiming co-ownership of the series through its association with McClory who, Sony asserts, is the co-creator with Fleming of the cinematic James Bond, a completely separate entity from the literary Bond of Fleming’s novels. “As a consequence of his joint authorship, McClory has at all times been at least a co-owner of copyright in and to the McClory scripts and all their elements, including the James Bond character,” according to Sony’s suit.

Pierce O’Donnell, MGM’s lead attorney, sees it a bit differently. “They've concocted this bizarre claim that a man who spent a few months working on an unsuccessful ‘Thunderball’ script with the man who created James Bond can somehow become the owner of the cinematic James Bond,” O'Donnell responded. “This novel claim is being asserted for the first time in 35 years, after UA has made 18 Bond movies. It is preposterous as a matter of fact and of law.”

Not to take sides or anything, but we couldn’t have said it any better.