The art of collecting James Bond posters

The James Bond films are one of the longest running success stories in world cinema. There are now 22 official James Bond films (defined as those released by EON productions) with a further two non-Eon films: the spoof version of ‘Casino Royale’ and ‘Never Say Never Again’, which was a 1983 remake of ‘Thunderball’. Even though it has Bond characters and starred Sean Connery, it was released as direct competition to the Eon Bond film ‘Octopussy’, starring Roger Moore.

The Bond film posters have become as carefully prepared and choreographed as the Bond films themselves. Like all the official Bond merchandise, they have to meet a very high standard and they all bear a certain formula in their production.

There are basically two types of film poster: the teaser poster and the cinema poster. The teaser poster would be sent to the cinemas a few weeks before the film would be available for release, so as to notify the audience that it was coming.

Sometimes the Bond teaser would be a full poster which would say ‘coming in the Summer’ or, like ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’, it may have its own artwork and message such as ‘a Christmas present from James Bond’. In later films, such as ‘Die Another Day’ or ‘Casino Royale’, the poster would simple feature Bond and the release date for the film...

PICTURED: 'Moonraker' teaser poster.

This is an excerpt of the 'The art of collecting James Bond posters' feature first published in Collectors Gazette's October issue. To see which issues of Collectors Gazette are available to buy, click here.