MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: Sean Connery was going to meet Pierce Brosnan's James Bond in Die Another Day.

For years, there has long been a popular fan theory about the character, James Bond, who had been played by a number of notable actors since the first James Bond film, Dr. No, was released in 1962.

The theory is that the name "James Bond," along with the assigned number, 007, are assigned to each new person who takes on the role in the films. In other words, much like how the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride was made up of people who just took on the name for themselves, there really isn't a single James Bond, but rather there are a bunch of different agents who each get assigned that identity. This way, the character can seem larger than life, having been a constant presence in the spy community for over fifty years.

Of course, this theory has been plainly disproven time and and again in the actual films, as the films have clearly treated each guy as if he was, in fact, the "real" James Bond, like having Roger Moore's Bond place flowers on the grave of Bond's dead wife, who died in a film where George Lazenby was Bond. Nearly all of the various Bonds have acted like they were married to Tracy Bond.

However, there have been plenty of theories that don't really hold up when you examine them, even if they turned out to be "true" in the end. For instance, Bill Lawrence initially intended for the Janitor on Scrubs to be a figment of JD's imagination. That was clearly the case, as Lawrence has explicitly said that that was his intent. But, even with that in mind, there were screw-ups that came from other people not knowing what Lawrence's plan was, so the Janitor interacts with people well before Lawrence gave up on the idea. In other words, things that seem to disprove a theory aren't necessarily grounds for doing so. You can just retcon whatever you feel like retconning.

Someone who was a fan of the "007 and James Bond are an assigned name" theory was Lee Tamahori.

When he directed Die Another Day, the film that would be released 40 years after the first James Bond film, he tried to work the theory into the film.

The movie opens with Bond getting captured on a mission in North Korea, having been betrayed by someone on the British side of things. He is help prisoner for over a year before he is released in a prisoner exchange...

He quickly gets back to basics and finds out who betrayed him...

Anyhow, Tamahori came up with the idea of working in a Connery cameo. He told Total Film in 2002:

I proposed that for this movie! I thought it’d be great: Bond receives a message to go to Scotland, where he meets Connery, who tells him, “I was 007 like yourself. Let me tell you something, young fella. You’re supposed to die on the job. But I got out. I had enough of it.” I thought the audience would have loved it But everyone thought it was too dangerous a concept. Something to do with not having two 007s in one movie.

The issue is that, as he notes above, Tamahori's idea never went PAST that - just an idea he had. He pitched it and nobody else liked the idea. So it was never even presented to Connery. Over the years, though, it has been transformed via the telephone game to being an actual plan that fell apart at the last minute for one reason or the other (you even occasionally see people claim that Connery FILMED the cameo and it was just not used).

But no, it never went past just an idea that the director had.

Amusingly enough, since he was filming for what proved to be his final film, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen...

Connery didn't even make the special 40th anniversary celebration of Die Another Day's release! The film, by the way, turned out to be Brosnan's final Bond film, as well.

The legend is...

STATUS: False

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