James Bond in film of the funding for the Bond films, fell into financial difficulties following the box office failure of "Heaven's Gate" (1980), bringing uncertainty to the future of the funding. The situation was resolved in May 1981, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquired United Artists. Following "For Your Eyes Only", Roger Moore had expressed a desire to stop playing James Bond. His original contract had been for three films, a requirement fulfilled with "The Spy Who Loved Me". Subsequent films had been negotiated on a film-by-film basis. The producers engaged in a semi-public quest for the next actor to play Bond, which would be for
James Bond Kingsley Amis (as Robert Markham) and published in 1968. Amis had already written a literary study of Fleming's Bond novels in his 1965 work "The James Bond Dossier". Although novelizations of two of the Eon Productions Bond films appeared in print, "James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me" and "James Bond and Moonraker", both written by screenwriter Christopher Wood, the series of novels did not continue until the 1980s. In 1981 the thriller writer John Gardner picked up the series with "Licence Renewed". Gardner went on to write sixteen Bond books in total; two of the books he wrote –