Moonraker
By the time The Spy Who Loved Me came out in 1977, audiences had come to expect a constant stream of new Bond movies. So, in the end credits, the producers touted their next release: For Your Eyes Only. But even after that promise was made to moviegoers, it didn’t happen. What happened was Star Wars. The success of the 1977 space epic encouraged the Bond machine to turn its attention away from Earth-bound adventures. The result? In 1979 the world got Moonraker, whose creators hoped the space-centric movie would be a zeitgeist-y hit. (For Your Eyes Only was postponed until 1981.) In order to make Moonraker seem more feasible (and thus Bond-like) than Star Wars — besides the obvious involvement of spies rather than Jedi — the producers consulted with NASA and even planned to premiere the film in Houston, near Mission Control, the week of the 1981 space-shuttle launch. Technical issues delayed the shuttle, though, so the movie bowed in London instead.