"From what I know about it, this seems to have been a curious choice for Broccoli and Saltzman to have made into the first movie. Since it came first, they had to get rid of the fishbladder poison cliffhanger, and then of course that caused a big domino effect with Rene Mathes, etc.

I hope as qualified persons contribute to the thread, they mention something that helps to answer that question: Why did the producers choose this book to come first?"

i think it's a great question, and don't know the answer, but here's some speculation... they couldn't have known that the series would be so successful, spanning 22 movies and over 4 decades. with that in mind, i'm not sure if they ever thought that they'd have consistency between the books to maintain. the probably figured that Dr. No was pretty action packed and exciting, so why not. It was originally written as a screenplay for TV, then adapted into the novel by fleming when the plans for the TV series fell through. So while it may seem like a curious choice in hindsight, it might have been the most practical choice at the time because it was originally conceived of as a work for the screen. It would be interesting to see if they would have done it differently, given the success of the franchise today. i think we lose a lot by the movies being created haphazardly. we lose a lot of Bond's development as a character in there. The development is driven by the change in actors, not so much by the stories.

But your guess is as good as mine :)

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