You Only Live Twice (film) declined the offer to direct, but accepted after producer Albert R. Broccoli called him saying: "You can't give up this job. It's the largest audience in the world." Peter R. Hunt, who edited the first five Bond films, believed that Gilbert had been contracted by the producers for other work but they found they had to use him. Gilbert, producers Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, production designer Ken Adam and director of photography Freddie Young then went to Japan, spending three weeks searching for locations. SPECTRE's shore fortress headquarters was changed to an extinct volcano after the team learned that the
You Only Live Twice (novel) where SPECTRE is introduced, and "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", where Blofeld is involved in the murder of Bond's wife. "You Only Live Twice" was the last book by Fleming that was published in his lifetime: he died five months after the UK release of the novel. It was written in January and February 1963 in Jamaica at Fleming's Goldeneye estate. The original manuscript was 170 pages long and the least revised of all Fleming's novels, with a mood that is dark and claustrophobic, reflecting Fleming's own increasing melancholia. The story was written after the film version of "Dr. No"