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Four James Bonds turned up for the 2002 Royal Premiere of DIE ANOTHER DAY at London’s Royal Albert Hall, but Sean Connery wasn’t one of them.

DIE was celebrating 007’s 40th year movie anniversary with a fundraiser premiere Nov. 18 with guests of honor Queen Elizabeth II & Prince Philip. It was an event Roger Moore, George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton & Pierce Brosnan, who was Bond at the time, weren’t going to miss. Connery, however, declined — saying he was busy filming THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, which was wrapping Nov. 24.  

Despite the franchise’s first 007 being MIA, it was still quite special with the Albert Hall transformed into DIE’s Ice Palace for the night. It also was an especially generous premiere with about £500,000 going to The Film and Television Charity, whose patron was the Queen.

Director Lee Tamahori (ONCE WERE WARRIERS) was already shooting when he thought of doing a car chase through the Ice set. Production designer Peter Lamont made it happen by reconstructing the set with steel girders to support the fast moving cars. It took four months to build the interior, whose floors were covered with a slick icy looking paint.

DIE’s ice chase only runs two minutes on screen, but filming it took four weeks. Because of the slippery surface, cars could only go about 20 miles per hour. To compensate for that, under-cranked cameras were used for filming. That meant that when the film was shown at normal projector speed, the cars would appear to be moving very fast.

DIE was the last of the Bond films to begin with the series’ signature gun barrel shooting sequence, which always preceded a pre-titles action scene. In the next Bond, 2006’s CASINO ROYALE, which introduced Daniel Craig, an ultra-redesigned gun barrel scene followed the pre-titles scene.

In the next two Bonds, QUANTUM OF SOLACE (2008) & SKYFALL (2012), both starring Craig, the familiar gun barrel wound up at the end. But when Craig returned in 2015’s SPECTRE, the  gun barrel was back at the beginning, where 007 fans most liked seeing it.

Producers Michael G. Wilson & Barbara Broccoli reportedly decided to make their next Bond darker and more realistic after seeing Christopher Nolan’s dark and gritty BATMAN BEGINS. Given CASINO’s storyline about Bond’s early secret agent years, Brosnan couldn’t play the role. A younger Bond was needed and that turned out to be Craig.

But Brosnan left 007 alive and well. DIE did $431.9M worldwide on a budget of $142M and was the biggest boxoffice Bond to date then.