Legal Battle Over Bond Characters Is Resolved

The legal battle between MGM and Kevin McClory and his estate is finally over, freeing up the rights to certain characters in the franchise.

McClory helped Ian Fleming in developing the storyline for Thunderball, and as a result McClory has claimed that he created many of the iconic characters from the world of James Bond, presumably Blofeld and SPECTRE, who would appear in successive movies following that.

It was this dispute that lead McClory to release Never Say Never Again, which is essentially just a remake of Thunderball, and is not considered a part of the Bond canon by MGM.

The legal issues were muddled further when Sony tried to buy the rights to Never Say Never Again and its characters from McClory, only to be sued for doing so by MGM (keeping up...?)

In the end, the sensible thing was done, and Blofeld, SPECTRE etc. were retired from the movie series, replaced by organisations such as Quantum.

With the legal issues now having been resolved (and no details have been released as to just how they were resolved), this means that we could theoretically now see Blofeld and co. returning to menace Daniel Craig's Bond in an upcoming movie (though where this would leave Quantum is anyone's guess).

The next Bond movie is expected to hit in 2015.