The James Bond film franchise—following the infamous international spy 007—has released over two dozen feature films and grossed billions of dollars in revenue since the 1960s. 1979’s Moonraker—which starred Roger Moore as Bond—was a big hit for the series, bringing in some heavy sci-fi elements in the wake of the Star Wars wave of popularity. But before that version of the film was produced, Gerry Anderson—creator of shows like Thunderbirds, UFO, and Space: 1999—was approached to adapt the story for the big screen while Sean Connery was still heading up the franchise.
Bond producer Harry Saltzman contacted Gerry Anderson in the late ’60s and asked him to come onboard the Moonraker adaptation, which Anderson saw as an opportunity to transition away from the Supermarionation work he was so well known for. He put together an 84-page treatment with frequent writing partner Tony Barwick, and this followed the original book more closely than the 1979 film would. Gerry’s son Jamie Anderson discovered a copy of the treatment several years back and discussed it on the SpyHard podcast:
In this version, Drax is a wheelchair-bound villain with long red hair, enormous mutton chops with a big moustache, and he’s developing Moonraker for the UK government.
The Moonraker is a missile that is designed to be launched into orbit around the Moon, and it will wipe out the planet if any nation uses nuclear weapons.
So the whole idea is, it’s mutually assured destruction for real—but independently controlled. So once it’s launched, it’s got its own detection systems, nobody can influence it.
The entire film takes place on Earth in Anderson’s treatment, and Drax’s base is a large supertanker—instead of a space station—so big, in fact, that a motorbike chase takes place at one point in the story. Allegedly, Saltzman loved the script and wanted to move forward with it, but ultimately nothing ever came of it, and the next Bond film released was Diamonds Are Forever. Fans of the franchise will of course recognize the supertanker setting, which was used in 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me. Gerry Anderson was not happy that Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli had taken this idea (Saltzman was no longer involved with the films at that point), and that resulted in a settlement where Anderson accepted some cash and agreed to destroy all copies of the treatment (though the one his son found escaped that fate).
Moonraker ultimately did get made into a movie in 1979, but that version was not based on anything Gerry Anderson had worked on. Interestingly enough, Derek Meddings—who had frequently collaborated with Anderson on his Supermarionation TV shows as well as the live-action feature film Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (aka Doppelganger)—handled the special effects for Moonraker. And Anderson would later create his own super-spy with the short-lived 1969 Supermarionation series The Secret Service.
