James Bond: 50 Years in Film (and a Big Blu-Ray Release)

The James Bond movie fran­chise began in 1962, with the release of Dr. No, star­ring a young Sean Con­nery. (Watch the orig­i­nal trail­er here.) And it did­n’t take long for the pro­duc­ers, Albert R. Broc­coli and Har­ry Saltz­man, to real­ize that they were onto some­thing. Speak­ing in 1965, Broc­coli and Saltz­man (above) spec­u­lat­ed that they had cre­at­ed “a mod­ern mythol­o­gy,” the Super­man of their age, and a long-last­ing “enter­tain­ment trend.” How right they were.

Fifty years have passed since audi­ences saw the first Bond movie. Sev­en actors have played James Bond in 22 films. And the next movie, Sky­fall, will hit the­aters in Novem­ber, with Daniel Craig play­ing the lead role. This marks a cause for cel­e­bra­tion (or at least a chance for Hol­ly­wood to ring the reg­is­ter). In the very near future, you can buy the com­plete James Bond Film Col­lec­tion (22 titles in total) on Blu-ray for $199.99, which works out to $9 per film and that does­n’t fac­tor in 130 hours of bonus mate­r­i­al. The clip below will pitch you on the Blu-ray release that can be pre-ordered here. If you’re look­ing for free James Bond media, don’t miss Ian Flem­ing (the cre­ator of the James Bond lit­er­ary char­ac­ter) in con­ver­sa­tion with Ray­mond Chan­dler in 1958 here.