You Only Live Twice (film) manned spacecraft disappear mysteriously in orbit. With each nation blaming the other amidst the Cold War, Bond travels secretly to a remote Japanese island to find the perpetrators and comes face to face with Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE. The film reveals the appearance of Blofeld, who was previously a partially unseen character. SPECTRE is working for the government of an unnamed Asian power, implied to be the People's Republic of China, to provoke war between the superpowers. During the filming in Japan, it was announced that Sean Connery would retire from the role of Bond, but after
James Bond in film Bond film, "The Spy Who Loved Me". Guy Hamilton was initially scheduled to follow on from "The Man with the Golden Gun" with "The Spy Who Loved Me", but instead turned down Eon Productions during pre-production after being offered the opportunity to direct the 1978 film "Superman", although he was ultimately passed up for Richard Donner. Eon then turned to Lewis Gilbert, who had directed the earlier Bond film "You Only Live Twice". Broccoli commissioned a number of writers to work on the script, including Stirling Silliphant, John Landis, Ronald Hardy, Anthony Burgess and Derek Marlowe, but Richard Maibaum drew