Trivia for
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) More at IMDbPro »

• The ships used in the film are Type 23 Duke Class Anti-Submarine Frigates. The interior shots were all filmed at HMS DRYAD ship simulator, and most of the personnel in the background are real Royal Navy personnel. Most of the dialogue and commands are very accurate, though some has been modified so the viewing public can understand it.
  
  
• Though well-known to British audiences, it probably escaped the notice of most others that Dame Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer, whose characters feud in this movie, played a happily-married couple in the British TV program "As Time Goes By" (1992).
  
  
• A promotional advertisement for BMW tying-in with the movie showed its three vehicles (two cars and one motorbike) together with the logos for the movie and BMW. The main tagline read: "How could Bond possibly be faithful to just one? BMW - The Ultimate Driving Machine." And the bottom tagline read: "See James Bond's new loves in the film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) on general release from 12th December."
  
  
• The Bill Tanner Chief of Staff character was intended to return in this movie after his appearance in GoldenEye (1995) but the actor playing him, Michael Kitchen, was unavailable to return.
  
  
• The opening arms bazaar sequence was originally intended to appear in the earlier James Bond movie The Living Daylights (1987). The weapon being sold at the arms bazaar was a Chinese Long March Scud Rocket. The atomic weapons held on board the Russian fighter plane were Soviet SP-5 Torpedoes.
  
  
• The number plate of Bond's BMW 750iL is "B-MT 2144". This ties in with his Aston Martin DB5's number plate "BMT 214A". The original movie Aston Martin, (from Goldfinger (1964)), had "BMT 216A", which could not be used for legal reasons.
  
  
• At one point during filming in Bangkok, a helicopter was mistakenly hovered over the American Embassy, causing fears that it was spying.
  
  
• Michelle Yeoh did almost all her own stunts.
  
  
• Director Roger Spottiswoode had hoped that the descent outside the building could be done by computerized special effects, but in the end a 7-storey section of wall was constructed and the stars lowered down alongside it.
  
  
• The film made particularly heavy use of gadgetry because some fans thought there was too little of it in GoldenEye (1995).
  
  
• Cameo: [Michael G. Wilson] Tom Wallace, one of Elliot Carver's subordinates on a television screen when Elliot Carver discusses his new story.
  
  
• The original title of the film was "Tomorrow Never Lies", which makes sense when you consider media mogul Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce) was creating the next day's headlines in advance, then causing those events to happen. But a typo on an early script draft was adopted by the producers, and "Tomorrow Never Dies" was used instead.
  
  
• In earlier drafts of the script, the villain Elliot Carver was known as Elliot Harmsway and Wai Lin was known as Lin Pow. Michelle Yeoh pointed-out that "pow" in Chinese meant "bun" and it was changed. Carver was also the surname of CIA Agent Rosie Carver in the earlier James Bond movie Live and Let Die (1973).
  
  
• Dedicated to the memory of long-time Bond-film producer Albert R. Broccoli.
  
  
• When Bond and Wai-lin prepare to send a radio message, Bond apparently can't use the keyboard because it uses Chinese characters. This contradicts the earlier film You Only Live Twice (1967) in which Bond says he has a first class degree in oriental languages from Cambridge University.
  
  
• The stealth ship is not a fictional invention. Lockheed secretly constructed and demonstrated one in the early 1980s, but the US Navy finally decided they didn't want any. The prototype, called the Sea Shadow, was 160 feet long and the movie's ship closely resembles it in shape.
  
  
• 15 BMW 750's were destroyed in the making of the film.
  
  
• When Bond gets out of his BMW in Hamburg and hands the keys to the valet, he says "Lass dich nicht verarschen." This is a German idiom which means, approximately, "Don't let him/her/them/it make an ass of you." However in the German dubbed version, Bond says "Nicht alles glauben, was sie sagt" which translates to "Don't believe everything she says."
  
  
• The first draft of the script was set during the transfer of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule with Carver a zealot bent on destroying Hong Kong rather that hand it over to the Chinese. According to director Roger Spottiswoode, this plotline was dropped when former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who was acting as a consultant on the production, warned that, if something actually did occur during the handover in real life, the film (which was set to open a few months later) would look ridiculous. This led to a last-minute rewrite.
  
  
• In several scenes of Bond's approach to the final denouement, the island used by "Francisco Scaramanga", Phang Nga Bay Island, Thailand (aka James Bond Island), in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) is visible.
  
  
• When Bond flips the switch for activating the rockets in the MiG during the opening, you can see German descriptions around the switches
  
  
• Sales of real and toy replica Walther P-99 pistols went through the roof after this movie was released.
  
  
• Not counting the regular characters of Bond, Q, M and Moneypenny, this is the first Bond movie to contain absolutely no Ian Fleming references (GoldenEye (1995) was named for Fleming's estate; Licence to Kill (1989) used elements from several Fleming stories).
  
  
• Because the second half of the film is set in Vietnam, the production negotiated for some time for permission to film there. Although it appeared close, the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture and Information eventually refused to allow it. The production decided to use Thailand as Vietnam, with Bangkok substituting for Saigon.
  
  
• Teri Hatcher's scenes had to be filmed quickly because after she got the part she found out she was pregnant.
  
  
• Producers considered starting a film series based on the character played by Michelle Yeoh but so far, no film has been made.
  
  
• In the original drafts of the script Stamper was to have suffered a brain injury that caused pleasure to be registered as pain (and vice versa). The idea was dropped, but a version of it made it into the next Bond film The World Is Not Enough (1999), where the villain Renard is unable to feel pain.
  
  
• The plane flown by Bond in the opening scene is NOT a MIG-type fighter but a L-39 FENIX from Czechoslovakia, the Czech name for this plane is Albatross. It was however also based in the USSR and GDR.
  
  
• British pop group Pulp wrote a theme song for this movie, which was ultimately rejected by the producers. The song later appeared on the B-side to the group's single "Help the Aged" following a title change to "Tomorrow Never Lies"
  
  
• Towards the end of the movie 'M', (Judi Dench) muses upon a probable newspaper story concerning the death of Elliot Carver. She mentions similar events which surrounded real-life British media tycoon Robert Maxwell's death in 1991.
  
  
• According to the book "The Bond Legacy", a farewell scene for Q was written for this film on the assumption that Desmond Llewelyn would soon retire from the role; the idea was dropped, only to be revived for the next Bond film The World Is Not Enough (1999).
  
  
• The role of Elliot Carver was initially offered to Anthony Hopkins.
  
  
• Teri Hatcher says that she accepted her role in this movie to fulfill her then husband's lifelong dream of being married to a Bond girl.
  
  
• Product placements, brand integrations, promotional tie-ins and sponsorships for this movie include BMW in their second film in a three picture promotional deal; L'Oréal Cosmetics; Heineken Beer; Dunhill; Ericsson Cellular Phones; Omega Watches, James Bond wears an Omega Seamaster watch; Smirnoff Vodka i.e. Smirnoff Red label Vodka; Brioni Clothing; Bollinger Champagne; Avis Rental Car Hire; and Electronic Arts' tie-in video-game, Tomorrow Never Dies (1999) (VG). This is the first movie in film history to have its entire budget be covered in product placement campaigns. Various companies each chipped in enough in endorsements to allow for the film's $100 million budget.
  
  
• The film was originally going to be called "Tomorrow never comes". There are video tapes that were in distribution when the film was released on video that do have the caption "Tomorrow never comes" at the very beginning of the tape, not the beginning of the movie.
  
  
• The first choice for a title song was originally written, composed and performed by Danish rock band Swan Lee but they were turned down because they were not famous enough. It was suggested that another artist sing the song instead but Swan Lee rejected this idea. So Sheryl Crow sang another song with the same title for the movie.
  
  
• When they had to re-shoot the car park scene it was too expensive to go back to Germany so it was done at Brent Cross shopping centre in London. Posters around the stores told shoppers that the explosions were nothing to worry about. It took ten days to shoot this car park scene and seventeen BMWs were used.
  
  
• Vehicles featured included a silver gadget-laden BMW 750iL car; a brief glimpse of the silver birch Aston Martin DB5; a BMW Cruiser R1200 C motorbike; Sikorsky S-65 and Eurocopter 350B A-Star, Eurocopter EC 135, and Eurocopter Panther AS 656 Attack helicopters; two Aero L-39 FENIX (aka L39 Albatross Z0) jets; a Ford Sierra; an Opel Senator 3.0i car; a Transport Allianz C-160 Transall airplane for the HALO jump; a Chinese Junk; a Daimler Limousine; an Asian trawler; a Mercedes Benz; a Range Rover; ships HMS Bedford, HMS Chester and HMS Devonshire; a Chinese MiG jet; a black rubber dinghy and Elliot Carver's black catamaran-designed Stealth Ship.
  
  
• Just before shooting the scene where Bond and Wai-Lin get on the motorcycle, Roger Spottiswoode took Pierce Brosnan and Michelle Yeoh aside - each without the other's knowledge - and told each of them not to let the other get in the driver's seat. The result is in the final film: Bond and Wai-Lin fight over who gets to drive before getting on the bike.
  
  
• Monica Bellucci read for the role of Paris Carver.
  
  
• Cameo: [Daphne Deckers] The wife of the Wimbledon 1996 Winner Richard Krajicek as Elliot Carver's PR Lady. Reportedly, she wanted to audition for the role of Paris Carver. Being too late for this, the production wrote in this small cameo role for her.
  
  
• First James Bond movie to be released by MGM Distribution Co. due to a name change from MGM/UA Distribution Co. The former named company had released all the EON Productions Bond films from Octopussy (1983) through to GoldenEye (1995).
  
  
• This was the second James Bond movie in a row in which Pinewood Studios, the studio that EON Productions regularly uses, was predominantly unavailable. It was booked-up for shooting Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) as it had been for GoldenEye (1995) when it was being used for First Knight (1995). For this movie, they used a grocery warehouse and former Radlett aerodrome site which was renamed as Eon / Frogmore Studios.
  
  
• HALO stands for High Altitude Low Opening Jump. Stuntman B.J. Worth had to make eighty jumps out of a plane in order to film the HALO jump sequence, eight jumps less than the 88 required for Moonraker (1979).
  
  
• First EON Productions James Bond movie to be presented by the "Albert R. Broccoli's Eon Productions" credit.
  
  
• Though it has long been part of the James Bond character's reputation in story and dialogue, this is the first instance in the EON Productions official series where James Bond has an on-screen relationship with a leading Bond Girl who is actually known to be married to another man.
  
  
• The literal translations of some of the movie's foreign language titles include James Bond 007: The Tomorrow Never Dies (Germany); Agent 007 Tomorrow Never Dies (Italy); James Bond: Tomorrow Never Dies (Slovenia); Tomorrow is Indestructible (Turkey); Tomorrow Never Dies Not (Poland); 007 Tomorrow Never Dies (Brazil); The Tomorrow Never Dies (Argentina, Germany, Peru, Italy, Spain); and The Empire After Today (or 007 and the Empire of Tomorrow) (Romania).
  
  
• Because the producers had already secured a release date, the production couldn't find studio space. They ended up shooting much of the interiors in a converted Asda (the British branch of Walmart) warehouse.
  
  
• Anthony Hopkins actually joined the production, but walked after three days because it was so chaotic and there was no completed shooting script; due to the pressure on Eon Productions to finish the film on time, new pages of the screenplay were being delivered every morning.
  
  
• The BMW 750i that Bond uses in this film is the first Q-Branch car in the series that has four doors.
  
  
• Because snow was an essential ingredient for the opening action sequence, and the existing snow was already melting, the art directors had to truck in loads of extra snow just to meet production requirements. This sequence alone took two weeks to complete.
  
  
• Director Roger Spottiswoode was insistent on having an authentic Russian rocket launcher for the opening sequence. Luckily for the production, a decommissioned unit was found and had to be driven from Moscow right across Europe to the location.
  
  
• The 'Situation Room' set designed by Allan Cameron was decorated with books on display hired by the meter, with titles including "The Companies Act, 1985", "The Insolvency Act, 1986", Protection and Industrial Decline" and "EEC and the Third World: A Survey".
  
  
• With the release date set for 12 December 1997, The second unit began filming the pre-title sequence (with a look-a-like substituting for Pierce Brosnan) in the Pyrenees on 23 January 1997. When Brosnan visited Hamburg on the 25th of March to promote Dante's Peak (1997), Desmond Llewelyn was flown to Germany to film the beginning of his scene at the airport. The rest of this sequence was later completed at Stansted Airport, England after principal photography began on April Fool’s Day.
  
  
• As shooting began on 1 April 1997, neither Jonathan Pryce nor Teri Hatcher had been cast yet.
  
  
• Seventeen 750iL aspen Grey BMW's were used for the car chase. Four were adapted to be 'hidden driver' cars, in which a concealed driver would sit in the back using a small steering wheel. Video monitors were attached to cameras hidden in the wing mirrors and on top of the windscreen. Three more BMW's were used as backup for the hidden drivers. One car was equipped with the sliding glove compartment revealing a safe and only used for this one scene. Another, dubbed the 'cannon', was specially prepared to be propelled off the roof. It was stripped off as much weight as possible in order to be fired from a special rig. The remaining seven 'pristine' cars were used only for back-up and exterior shots, including one that was being kept in Hamburg for shooting there.
  
  
• Stunt performers Mark Southworth and Wendy Leech performed the skyscraper jump on 21 may 1997 in Bankok, with temperatures reaching as high as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Wendy also doubled for Michelle Yeoh during the motorbike chase with French rider Jean-Pierre Goy driving the BMV R1200 C cruiser. A dummy was strapped to Goy's back as he performed the rooftop jump over the helicopter on the same bike on 24 July. The helicopters blades had been removed to be added digitally in post production. On that same day, Pierce Brosnan and Michelle Yeoh were filming their close-ups hanging thirty feet up at the side of a five story building to complete the Carver building stunt.
  
  
• Jonathan Pryce has the distinction in being the only actor to have ever played both a James Bond movie's major villain (as Elliot Carver in this movie) and James Bond creator Ian Fleming in Ian Fleming: Where Bond Began (2008) (TV).
  
  
• The car driving itself by remote-control gimmick has actually been previously used before in the spy genre, seen in the James Bond spoof OK Connery (1967).
  
  
• This is the first James Bond movie in the official series to have a running time under two hours since Diamonds Are Forever (1971). The next film to run under 120 minutes would be Quantum of Solace (2008).
  
  
• Writer Bruce Fierstein's nine word pitch to the film's producers was: "Words are the new weapons; satellites, the new artillery."
  
  
• The end credits song "Surrender" was composed and sung in the style of a Shirley Bassey song, Bassey being a stalwart of Bond songs having sung a number of them.
  
  
• The film's Charity World Premiere was held on Tuesday 9th December 1997 (which is also Judi Dench's birthday) at the Odeon Theatre Leicester Square in London, England. The launch was not a Royal Premiere on this occasion. The Gala Charity Premiere Benefit was held in aid of the King George's Fund for Sailors. The after-party was held at Bedford Square home of Jonathan Cape, the publisher of the Ian Fleming James Bond novels. The American Gala Premiere in the USA was held in Los Angeles on Tuesday 16th December 1997 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
  
  
• The title song "Tomorrow Never Dies" sung by Sheryl Crow did not chart in the USA but in the UK it went to the No. #11 spot in the UK Charts.
  
  
• The title song tune was chosen by way of a competition. There were about twelve entries including songs from Emil Jørgensen, Pulp, Saint Etienne, Marc Almond, Sheryl Crow and David Arnold'.
  
  
• The movie's DVD release of the movie contains a music track where people can watch the movie without dialogue and with the score and background music only.
  
  
• The movie's score was not complete in time for the release of the soundtrack. As such, a second soundtrack album was released on 11 January 2000 by Chapter III Records. This album added additional tracks not featured in the first release but removed the songs "Tomorrow Never Dies" by Sheryl Crow, and "Surrender" by 'k.d. Lang', the tracks "Station Break" and "Killing Benjamin Evans" and Moby's Remix of the James Bond theme. The added tracks included a David Arnold interview as well as the tracks "Helicopter Ride", "Bike Chase", "Bike Shop Fight", "Kowloon Bay", "Boarding the Stealth", "A Tricky Spot for 007" and "All in a Day's Work".
  
  
• The title song "Tomorrow Never Dies" sung by Sheryl Crow did not chart in the USA but in the UK it went to the No. #12 spot in the UK Charts.
  
  
• The only Pierce Brosnan James Bond film not to open at number one in the US box office charts. It was released in the same week as "Titanic" (1997).
  
  
• MGM exerted a lot of pressure on the producers to come up with a follow-up to "GoldenEye" (1995) that was as successful. This was mainly at the urgings of billionaire Kirk Kerkorian who had recently bought the company and wanted the release to coincide with MGM's public stock offering.
  
  
• Martin Campbell declined the chance to direct again, not wanting to make two James Bond films in a row. Campbell would do the same in 2006 after the success of "Casino Royale".
  
  
• Crime writer Donald E. Westlake provided a treatment.
  
  
• The initial script was written by Bruce Feirstein who had also worked on "GoldenEye". Director Roger Spottiswoode then reworked it when he came on board. He gathered 7 leading screenwriters in London for a brainstorm, eventually choosing Nicholas Meyer to perform rewrites. The script then went to Dan Petrie Jr and David Campbell Wilson before going back for one final polish to Feirstein who retained sole writing credit.
  
  
• The initial script was to involve the July 1997 handover of Hong Kong back to the Chinese. However, this would have instantly dated a film that was due to open in November, so in January 1997 when production was kicking off, a frantic rewrite of the script was taking place. With all the actors on board and ready to film, the new script also had to tally with their visions of their characters. Both Jonathon Pryce and Teri Hatcher were unhappy with the route their characters were taking in the new script, prompting even more rewrites.
  
  
• Teri Hatcher later publicly expressed her dissatisfaction with the part of Paris, saying it was "an artificial kind of character to be playing that you don't get any special satisfaction from it".
  
  
• Natasha Henstridge was in the running to play the lead Bond girl at one point.
  
  
• David Arnold was chosen to compose the score on the personal recommendation of John Barry.
  
  
• Michelle Yeoh, who did most of her own stunts, asked her fellow motorbike stuntman to drive faster in the helicopter chase scene as it would make her hair fly out behind her, adding to the effect of speed.
  
  
• Gotz Otto dyed his hair blond to play Stamper.
  
  
• A lot of the model work and underwater sequences were filmed in the Titanic tank at Fox's Baja Studios in Mexico, just days after "Titanic" had completed filming.
  
  
• Elliott Carver's newspaper factory is actually the printing presses of London's Daily Telegraph and Evening Standard.
  
  
• 500 extras were used for Elliott Carver's launch party where Bond reconnects with Paris.
  
  

• SPOILER: Vincent Schiavelli's character is a hit man who kills Teri Hatcher's character. He also played a hit man in one episode of "MacGyver" (1985), who was again, after Teri Hatcher's character, though not as successfully.
  
  

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