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Tomorrow Never Dies: Film – Trivia

James Bond has a new gun in this film. It is the Walther P99, which is the replacement for his trademark Walther PPK. He picks up the gun in Wai Lin’s apartment.
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 film, played a happily-married couple in the British TV program “As Time Goes By”
The name of the type of torture that Stamper (Götz Otto) was an expert in was Chakra Torture.
During the pre-credits opening sequence, Admiral Roebuck’s (Geoffrey Palmer) code name was Black King; the Captain of the HMS Chester’s code name was White Bishop; M’s code name was White Rook whilst James Bond’s code name was White Knight.
The co-ordinates where the HMS Devonshire was sunk in the South China Sea were 114° 23′ 818″ E and 37° 74′ 624″ N.
The license plate number of James Bond’s BMW 750 was HHJ5273.
The name of Elliot Carver’s major tabloid newspaper was “Tomorrow”.
The name of Elliot Carver’s secret black radar-undetectable ship was “The Stealth Ship”.
The name of the weapon used to sink the HMS Devonshire was “The Sea Drill”. The number of survivors was seventeen.
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 film 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 an earlier draft of the script, the villain Elliot Carver was known as Elliot Harmsway.
CMGN stood for the Carver Media Group Network.
The license plate number of the Black Rolls Royce that M and Moneypenny brief Bond about his mission in was MKG 169.
The license plate numbers of two cars that chase James Bond’s BMW in the car park were HH J5273 and HH W3847.
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 film’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 film was released.
Not counting the regular characters of Bond, Q, M and Moneypenny, this is the first Bond film 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 film, 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 film ‘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 film to fulfill her then husband’s lifelong dream of being married to a Bond girl.
This is the first film in film history to have its entire budget be covered in product placement campaigns: BMW, L’Oréal cosmetics, Heineken beer, and other 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 film.
The title song was originally composed and performed by Danish rock band Swan Lee. Sheryl Crow performs it in the film, as the singing voice of Pernille Rosendahl and the sound of the band weren’t thought to be “James Bondish” enough.
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 10 days to shoot the car park scene.
Vehicles featured included a silver gadget-laden BMW 750iL; a brief glimpse of the silver birch Aston Martin DB5; a BMW Cruiser R 1200 C motorbike; Sikorsky S-65 and Eurocopter 350B A-Star helicopters; two Aero L-39 Albatros Z0 jets; a Ford Sierra; an Opel Senator 3.0i car; a Transport Allianz C-160 Transall airplane; a Chinese Junk; a Daimler Limousine; a Mercedes Benz; a Range Rover; a black rubber dinghy and Elliot Carver’s 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 film 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).
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 license plate number of the BMW R1200 Motorcycle which is ridden by James Bond and Wai Lin in the motorbike chase and action sequence is 2 – 035 4. License plate numbers of the Ford Range Rovers that chased this motorbike were 25 – 1085 and 31 – 4836.
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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Entry created: December 28, 2006; 9:30; Last modified: August 14, 2009; 23:20
Suggested citation: "Tomorrow Never Dies: Film – Trivia", BondUnlimited, bondunlimited.com; Downloaded from http://www.bondunlimited.com/1530.html at Sunday, September 5, 2010, 2:57 am IST
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