A Real-Life Tragedy During a Ridley Scott Production Changed James Bond Movies Forever

There are cursed film productions, and then there’s what happened behind the scenes at Pinewood Studios in the summer of 1984. Fresh off Alien and Blade Runner, Ridley Scott was shooting his long-gestating fantasy film Legend when a massive fire broke out. The forest set quickly erupted into flames while the crew was at lunch, and the blaze got way out of hand with no one around to act on it.

Worse, the fire didn’t just derail Ridley Scott’s troubled production — it also destroyed the historic James Bond stage next door, halting Roger Moore’s final James Bond outing, A View to a Kill, just as it had started its shoot. More than 40 years later, the inferno remains one of the most consequential disasters in blockbuster filmmaking history. In more ways than one, things would never be the same.

Ridley Scott’s ‘Legend’ Was a Production Nightmare Before the Fire

Even before the fire, Legend was already kind of a mess. Scott had spent years developing the project after getting frustrated by the collapse of some other planned productions, including an early version of Dune. Rather than adapting existing material, Scott collaborated with novelist William Hjortsberg to create a great dark fantasy film of their own.

And because it could be whatever he wanted it to be, the scale of Legend quickly grew into something much more massive than its budget of $25 million could support. So, he decided to construct an entire fantasy world inside Pinewood Studios as a cost-cutting measure. For more than three months straight, crews worked to create a forest of artificial trees looking like the massive Sequoias of Yosemite National Park. In the end, the fairy-tale world was spread across six enormous soundstages.

Then, with less than two weeks of shooting left, disaster struck. On June 27, 1984, some unknown firestarter reached a heap of leftover gas canisters. In an instant, all those fake trees went up like real kindling, with flames reportedly shooting more than a hundred feet into the air and smoke clouds seen from miles away. Legend’s set was reduced to ashes, and so was Pinewood’s home to countless James Bond productions — including the one that had just started shooting, A View to a Kill.

Ridley Scott’s ‘Legend’ Fire Threw a James Bond Movie Into Chaos

Image via MGM

The timing could hardly be worse for A View to a Kill. The Bond sequel already carried a ton of pressure as Moore’s seventh and ultimately final appearance as 007, but it was also given one of the franchise’s biggest budgets. Now, with the 007 stage destroyed, the Bond production suddenly found itself without a home… and its studio on the hook for the cost to rebuild. A View to a Kill‘s crew had to shift work to other stages while reconstruction began. The facility wouldn’t reopen until January 1985, and Scott had to improvise, as well. Though Legend only reportedly lost about three shooting days, entire sections of its fantasy world had to be rebuilt. That added another layer of stress to an already technically overwhelming production.

Ironically, neither Legend nor A View to a Kill were well-received on release. Legend became notorious for its multiple cuts, tonal inconsistencies, and troubled production history. Though it’s since gained cult status for its breathtaking visuals and Curry’s unforgettable performance as Darkness, Legend was a box office flop that killed hopes of future original big-budget fantasy films in Hollywood. Likewise, A View to a Kill remains a low point of Moore’s Bond era as well as the first to film in the newly rebuilt studio. (That new stage is still used for Bond films, too, even as recently as No Time to Die.)

The fire alone can’t take all the blame for either movie’s disappointments, but there’s no denying how the catastrophe shaped the infamous final products. Could Ridley Scott’s movie have been more of a success had its set not been burned down in the final stretch? Might we have gotten another Moore Bond if production had gone as scheduled? We’ll never truly know, but it’s hard not to wonder.

Release Date

August 28, 1985

Runtime

94 minutes

Writers

William Hjortsberg

Producers

Arnon Milchan

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