listen.

Casino Royale is the 21st James Bond film produced by EON Productions and the first to star Daniel Craig as British Secret Service agent James Bond . Based on the 1953 novel Casino Royale by Ian Fleming , it was adapted by Neal Purvis , Robert Wade, and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Paul Haggis and directed by Martin Campbell , director of the 1995 Bond film, GoldenEye . Despite initial controversy over Craig's casting , his performance and the film received positive reviews . It currently has a powerful 8.2/10 rating on the Internet Movie Database and it has been rated at #229 in the top 250 movie of all time , the highest rating for a James Bond movie (though it should be noted that movies on the IMDb tend to have a higher rating when they first come out) .

After obtaining his 00-number and his license to kill , James Bond sets out on his first mission , in which he foils a terrorist attack at the Miami International Airport . Soon after , Bond is sent to Montenegro by Her Majesty's Government to compete in a high-stakes poker game against Le Chiffre , a money-launderer for various criminal enterprises and terrorist organizations .

This film marks the third screen adaptation of Ian Fleming's first Bond novel , which was previously produced as a 1954 television episode and a 1967 film spoof . However , the 2006 release is the only official EON Productions adaptation of Fleming's novel . Casino Royale is the first official Bond film to be co-produced by Columbia Pictures , which had produced and originally distributed the 1967 non-canonical film version ; this is the result of the 2005 Sony/Comcast consortium's acquisition of MGM , parent company of Bond film series rights co-owner United Artists .