Trailer
Plot summary
British agent 009 dies at the ambassador's residence in Berlin, dressed as a circus clown and carrying a fake Fabergé egg. MI6 suspects the Soviets, and when the real egg is put up for auction in London, James Bond is sent to identify the seller. At the auction Bond swaps the eggs and bids against Kamal Khan, an exiled Afghan prince, who pays £500,000 for the copy. Bond then travels to India and reaches Khan's palace.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Octopussy (1983)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Roger Moore wanted out after For Your Eyes Only, so the producers hunted a new Bond in semi-public, screen-testing Michael Billington, Oliver Tobias and James Brolin. Brolin said he had actually been hired and was about to move to London when the rival Connery film Never Say Never Again was announced and Moore was persuaded back.
- Casting director Jane Jenkins was told to find a South Asian actress for the title role, could think of only Persis Khambatta and Susie Coelho, then auditioned white actresses such as Barbara Parkins and Kathleen Turner. Broccoli settled on Swedish-born Maud Adams, whose hair was darkened and whose backstory gained lines about an Indian upbringing.
- Sybil Danning was announced as Octopussy in Prevue magazine but never actually cast, later saying Albert R. Broccoli felt "her personality was too strong". Faye Dunaway was judged too expensive, and Barbara Carrera turned the part down to play Fatima Blush in the rival Bond film.
- The jewel-smuggling plot came out of the headlines: a Soviet scandal involving General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev's son-in-law, in which the Moscow State Circus was used to smuggle jewellery, prompted the rewrite.
- Bond's mini-jet never flies through the hangar. The aircraft was bolted to an old Jaguar with a steel pole and driven with the roof removed, while people and objects were placed to hide the car; the explosion afterwards used a model whose flying debris was four inches long.
- Stunt coordinator Martin Grace, doubling for Roger Moore on the outside of the moving train, kept going longer than he should have after a miscommunication with the second unit director. The train ran onto track that had not been properly surveyed and a concrete pole fractured his left leg.
- The cyclist who rides through the middle of a sword fight in the baby-taxi chase was not an extra but a passer-by, oblivious that a film was being shot. Two cameras caught him and the moment was left in the finished film.
- John Barry, absent from For Your Eyes Only because of tax problems, returned for his ninth Bond score and quoted the "James Bond Theme" repeatedly on purpose, to mark this as the official Bond film, since the rival Never Say Never Again could not use the motif.
