The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The Spy Who Loved Me is about James Bond and KGB agent Major Anya Amasova, who are forced to team up to find out who is making British and Soviet ballistic missile submarines vanish. The film opens with those two submarines disappearing without a trace, and MI6 sends Bond to find out why. Soviet agents attack him during a ski chase before he has learned a thing.

The plans for a new submarine tracking system are being sold in Egypt, and that is where Bond meets Anya, who is chasing the very same prize. Their governments order the two rivals to cooperate, so the mission becomes a partnership between people who would each prefer to work alone. Hanging over both of them is Jaws, a huge steel toothed killer who keeps turning up at the worst moment.

In The Spy Who Loved Me, Bond and Anya Amasova stop shipping tycoon Karl Stromberg from using stolen nuclear submarines to start a nuclear war and found a civilization under the sea. After the ski ambush, Bond kills the leader of the Soviet group, Sergei Barsov, while escaping. In Egypt he crosses paths with Anya, who wants the same microfilm containing the submarine tracking plans. Their governments agree to a truce, so the two reluctantly work together while Jaws repeatedly tries to kill them.

The trail leads to Stromberg and his base in Sardinia. Posing as a married couple of marine scientists, Bond and Anya visit the base and learn about a mysterious supertanker called the Liparus. Stromberg's henchmen chase them, and Bond's Lotus Esprit turns into a submarine so they can escape underwater. Then, Anya finds out that Bond killed Barsov, who was her lover, and she vows to take revenge once the mission is done.

The pair board the American submarine USS Wayne, which is swallowed by the Liparus. Inside, the tanker is revealed to be a floating dock holding the stolen submarines. Stromberg plans to fire their missiles at Moscow and New York, so that he can build a new civilization under the sea. Bond frees the captured sailors, and the crews take over the control room. He then tricks the two stolen submarines into firing on each other.

Bond rescues Anya from Stromberg's underwater base, Atlantis, and kills Stromberg, while Jaws survives a fight with a shark. Bond and Anya escape in a pod just before Atlantis is destroyed. Anya points Bond's gun at him but chooses not to shoot, and they embrace.

The Spy Who Loved Me had a reported US release on 13 July 1977 and a reported UK release on 20 July 1977; it grossed $46.8 million domestically and $138.6 million internationally, and streams on Amazon Prime Video in the US, UK and Australia.

US release: 13 July 1977 (reported). UK release: 20 July 1977 (reported). Australian release: 19 July 1977 (reported). UK premiere: date, city and venue not confirmed. All three dates are theatrical releases, so 20 July should not be read as a premiere. The film is rated PG in the US and the UK and M in Australia, and it runs 125 minutes.

On a $14 million budget, the film earned about $185.4 million worldwide, which is the sum of the Box Office Mojo domestic figure and The Numbers international figure.

Where can you stream The Spy Who Loved Me? As of 2 November 2026, JustWatch data via TMDB lists Amazon Prime Video (including the tier with ads) as the streaming service in all three markets, and the film is not listed on Netflix in any of them. Rent and buy options sit in the watch table, and for other titles see where to watch James Bond.

The ending of The Spy Who Loved Me resolves in three steps: the stolen submarines destroy each other, Atlantis is destroyed, and Anya cannot bring herself to shoot Bond. The nuclear threat ends when Bond tricks the two stolen submarines into firing on each other, which turns Stromberg's own weapons against his plan. Bond then reaches Stromberg's base, kills him and rescues Anya, and torpedoes from the USS Wayne destroy the base while the pair flee in an escape pod.

The emotional beat is the gun. Anya raises Bond's gun to take revenge for her dead lover, Sergei Barsov, and then cannot fire, and the two embrace. Anya's choice not to shoot Bond answers the title: the spy who loved him spares him. The setup for that moment starts in the ski chase, where Bond kills Barsov while escaping, and it is confirmed in the Sardinia stretch, when Anya learns who killed him and vows to take revenge once the mission is done. Between those scenes the film keeps the debt open through the truce in Egypt, the cover story as married marine scientists and the escape in the Lotus Esprit submarine car. In my opinion, that long delay is why the scene works: she has had a whole film to decide.

The mechanics of the finale are also tied to the film's origins. Ian Fleming's estate allowed only the novel's title to be used, so the story, including the Liparus swallowing the USS Wayne and the plan to fire missiles at Moscow and New York, was written fresh. Production accounts summarized on Wikipedia add that legal action by Kevin McClory over SPECTRE and Blofeld led Albert R. Broccoli to drop those elements. That is why the villain is Karl Stromberg, with a nuclear plan and an underwater city, rather than a SPECTRE scheme.

A comparison with the rest of the series, as opinion: this is the tenth official EON film and the first made without Harry Saltzman, and it ends on a choice between two agents rather than on a purely mechanical escape. The Man with the Golden Gun, released just before it, has a different villain setup. Here the final image is quieter: their superiors watch from a ship as the pod floats at sea, a restrained close after the scale of the tanker and the underwater set that Pinewood's $1.8 million 007 Stage was built to hold. Jaws also survives his fight with a shark, which leaves him free to return as a villain. For the previous film, see The Man with the Golden Gun, and for the next, see Moonraker.

The Spy Who Loved Me was filmed across Canada, Switzerland, Italy, Egypt, the Bahamas, England and Scotland. The opening ski jump stunt was shot on Mount Asgard on Baffin Island, Canada, where stuntman Rick Sylvester performed the leap in July 1976. Additional ski scenes were shot in the Bernina Range in Switzerland.

Sardinia, Italy, hosted the main unit filming at Porto Cervo and the Hotel Cala di Volpe, plus the car chase. In Egypt, scenes were filmed in Cairo and Luxor, including Karnak and Abu Simbel. Nassau, in the Bahamas, was the base for the underwater sequences, the Lotus submarine car and the supertanker miniature.

The interior of the supertanker was built at Pinewood Studios in England, on a new 007 Stage that cost $1.8 million and opened on 5 December 1976. A submarine base at Faslane in Scotland also features.

The Spy Who Loved Me car is the Lotus Esprit that turns into a submarine, and several of them were modified for the film. The submarine version was a prop body operated by a stunt man in scuba gear. One sold at auction in 2013 for $989,000 to Elon Musk. For more vehicles, see James Bond cars.

More facts from the production:

• Only the title of Ian Fleming's novel was licensed, which is why the story is new.
• Harry Saltzman had already sold his half of the franchise to United Artists in 1975, so this was the first Bond film made without him.
• Rick Sylvester made the opening ski jump off Mount Asgard in July 1976.
• Barbara Bach joined four days before filming began, and Barbara Jefford dubbed Caroline Munro's voice.
• Pinewood's 007 Stage opened on 5 December 1976 and cost $1.8 million.
• Nobody Does It Better was the first Bond theme song with a title different from the film's.

To see where the film sits in the saga, read James Bond movies in order or return to the James Bond movies hub.