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The history of the English-language lobby cards for the James Bond films: Part II of III
By: Simon Firth
Published:
2026-01-06
2026-01-06
This is part II of III of an exclusive article series on the From Sweden with Love website. Click here for Part I.
Lobby cards are 11x14 inch cards that are, as the name suggests, displayed in the lobby of the cinema. They aren’t to be confused with the 10x8 inch Front of the House (FOH) UK cards, or US Colour Still Sets that are displayed at the Front of House. It was earlier mentioned that prices for these cards remain moderate. The trend amongst sellers and galleries of film memorabilia is to sell some of these perceived higher value cards as singles, as opposed to, as complete sets as they were initially provided to the cinemas. Certainly this is an exercise in capitalistic profiteering but if there is a market for this method of transaction, then one must assume it is there to be exploited.
This article refers only to the UK, US and English language International output – no comment can be made on European and foreign language International Lobby Card sets. The Bond series to this point in history (2025) numbers 27 official and unofficial films, and has produced a total of no less than 60 lobby card sets numbering 492 cards, the tally for which can be found at the end of this article series.
The Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan eras of lobby cards
The Living Daylights (1987) introduced a colour poster graphic and the set for Licence to Kill (1989) had a pleasant graded background to the cards. The set for GoldenEye (1995) had all aspects flipped in the sense that the image was shifted to the right, the title to the top and the credits to the left but the one quiz show point to this set was that it was the only Bond set, to that date, to incorporate a title card making it, in effect, a set of nine. A title card is a card that shows the poster artwork; produced in the UK, this was of British quad poster design.
Lobby card from the UK set for the 1989 James Bond film Licence to Kill. All rights reserved.
Lobby card from the UK set for the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye. All rights reserved.
Over-production was in full swing with the set for Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), which took the image over to the left once again but included an amalgamation of poster aspects from both the UK and US artworks. The bank of TVs from the UK art is to the right and the 007 logo and title from the US art to the bottom. A heavier paper stock was used to produce a dynamic set but the artwork was beginning to detract from the image itself.
The US lobby cards for the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. All rights reserved.
If over-production was introduced for Tomorrow Never Dies, then the set produced for The World Is Not Enough (1999), took it too far. The title was squeezed in at the top, there was full US poster artwork to the right and the full poster credits were included at the bottom – somewhere amongst this advocating of ‘more is better’ were the images. However the paper stock was very impressive and as another quiz type anomaly, this set came as a set of 12. One card showing Bond and Jones being held to gunpoint is a poor choice due to framing; only the arms and guns were shown of their attackers. Your attention is referred to what was said about the Dr No set in that the design was simple and spacious. While the set for World is very modern and sleek, when directly compared to the set for Dr No it does appear exceptionally cluttered and busy. Perhaps it is trying to make up for in excitement what was lacking in the film it was trying to promote.
The UK lobby cards set B for the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough. All rights reserved.
As previously mentioned, all the sets from A View to a Kill were produced by the UK. Again, for reasons unknown, production once again reverted to the US with a simply staggering set for Die Another Day (2002). In times when paper marketing material has been gradually phased out since the 1980’s with FOH sets and Pressbooks being made redundant in the face of electronic advertising and indeed, one would say, the paper poster itself being threatened into oblivion, it is amazing that a set was produced for Die Another Day at all. This is a superlative example of what can be done with the right designers. A set of 10, each card is on quality stock with a black border surrounding the image and the title. The image fills the card with an icy logo-ed title at the bottom and for this set, cast and crew credits were correctly omitted. To give the set a quality, anniversary feel, the set had been given a high gloss finish. The once-standard US method of numbering the cards and attendant NSS information is no longer evident and what is surprising is that both the MGM and Fox (distributors for the US and UK respectively) logos are evident bottom right and left, perhaps thus making it a truly International card set.
Lobby card from the UK set for the 2002 James Bond film Die Another Day. All rights reserved.
The Daniel Craig era of lobby cards
With Casino Royale (2006) came a new studio, a new Bond to highly vocal negative and positive reaction during production but nearly universal acclaim upon release, and a new rendering of what was to make a successful Bond film in the face of TV series ‘24’ and the Jason Bourne films that were providing merited fare across viewing media. Perhaps due more to ensuring a solid awareness of new Bond Craig, paper marketing was back in full force with a full range of posters, solid magazine style presskits in both the US and UK, and UK Marketing Guides reminiscent of the old Pressbooks and Campaign books. With such production in full swing, it was not surprising that a set of lobby cards was also produced. What was surprising was that this set of 12 came with both portrait and landscape presentations of cards. This together with some of the cards offering two images in one card and two title cards showcasing the International A and B campaign posters, made for a set of varying artistic merit. Knowledge of Sony’s other lobby card output is scarce so perhaps this style of presentation is a norm for this studio; suffice it to say the Spiderman 3 set offered a similar presentation. The card stock is of a quality thickness and there is no NSS numbering on the cards as per US historical output.
UK lobby card from Set A for the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale. All rights reserved.
Even though these cards were produced by the US and were offered as a US set for domestic use, a question does arise as to the inclusion of the two International poster designs for the title cards. One would normally have assumed that the US poster artwork would have been used but in the face of globalization, is this a direction whereby the entire world will look the same as evolution and cost saving measures means, in this case, one set will accommodate homogenized all? Or, perhaps all UK and US produced lobby sets are now meant as English language International sets, irrespective of where they are printed.
One anomaly for this set is that a deleted scene is included of Bond and Vesper holding each other in the Bahamian water.
Quantum of Solace (2008) opened powerfully with the smarter critic sets commenting that ‘Art House Jason Bond / James Bourne returns’, uniquely showcasing their knowledge of both the director’s roots and the fact that key personnel from the Bourne series were to be found contributing to Quantum of Solace. It is also record breaking in that it is the shortest Bond film in history, a direct sequel to the previous Bond film and the first to feature a duet for the theme tune. But, it is not the highest grossing Bond film which was, at the time of writing, a claim still held by Casino Royale but to be later smashed by Skyfall’s (2012) $1.1bn revenue haul.
The UK lobby cards Set A for the 2008 James Bond film Quantum of Solace. All rights reserved.
Incredibly though, the purpose of the article being what it is, it is amazing there was another lobby card set released at all considering the marketing digital push. That said, it is a very similar presentation to the Casino Royale set meaning there are portrait and landscape cards, some cards featuring multiple images and, this time, just one title card featuring the US 1 sheet artwork as opposed to the previously featured two International artworks - all again, making for a set of randomly aesthetic pleasure. What is also apparent with the Sony lobby card sets is that the images chosen were long available from the studio; all were released as part of the campaign to slowly build publicity for the film during production. So it seems strange that these same images were chosen again for the final push. What stands this set apart from the previous film’s set is that, like that of Die Another Day, the cards are printed with a very high gloss finish making it a vastly more luxurious set than that for Casino Royale. A minor curiosity is that on seven of the cards, the Quantum of Solace film title intrudes on the image and on the remaining four cards, the title maintains a smaller presence and fits within the black border surrounding the image.
The comment about the Lobby Cards’ redundancy as a marketing tool and, as a consequence, what will be the added expenditure involved in producing these sets should be discussed. In the UK, a set has yet to be seen by the author actually advertising the film since the days of Octopussy back in 1983. What was their use in the UK? Were they used to promote the film in the US? In the end, it was demonstrated that these questions were both timely and quickly redundant as a lobby set was not produced for Skyfall in 2012, or indeed thereafter. Since writing the majority of these words in 2020, it is evident that paper film posters are being faded out in place of screens in the same way that advertising posters have been replaced by screens in London’s Underground. Cinemas in the UK seem no longer to use either posters or the larger hanging vinyl banners.
The Casino Royale (1967) and Never Say Never Again (1983) lobby cards
To go back through the years though, there are still a number of sets to be covered for this article. The 1967 ‘unofficial’ Casino Royale produced a competent set, as did Never Say Never Again (1983). Both sets had full sized images, were produced in the US, and were sets of eight. However, as was earlier introduced to this essay, the question over the provenance of the two paper For Your Eyes Only sets as being possibly Australian, a further curio should be discussed in respect of an Australian photosheet for Never Say Never Again. This is a 1-sheet poster sized collection of six b/w images set against a red / gold coloured border with a banner effect image of the lesser seen logo design placed at the bottom. As with the For Your Eyes Only photosheet, the intention would have been to separate the images for individual display in the theatres but whereas the former was separable by perforations, there were no such aids to separation here. Also, the folds of the poster went right through the designs of the cards making for a potentially less than satisfactory lobby presentation.
The UK lobby cards for the 1967 James Bond film Casino Royale. All rights reserved.
Some words should also be devoted to the origins of the alternate English language design poster that again causes confusion. This more orange hued poster with the blocked logo design is often thought to be Australian in origin, more likely because posters of this design do exist with the Australian certification, M (for Mature) rating against the title. This said, posters without any such rating also exist which has raised the question as to whether it is also an International poster and that Australia merely adopted this design as their own with the addition of the M rating. The answer lay in investigating the PSO company name added to this poster.
The US lobby cards for the 1983 James Bond film Never Say Never Again. All rights reserved.
PSO was the international sales organization for Never Say Never Again and they decided to design their own artwork for the film which local distributors could use in case they were not going to design their own local art. In Benelux for example, the Belgian distributor used the design upon which they based their own local poster but in Holland, which utilized a different distributor, they simply ordered a number of these international one sheets and shipped them into theatres. PSO is no longer in existence. In its final years of existence, PSO briefly became a fully-fledged production company, financing films such as The Neverending Story (with Warner Bros. Pictures), Das Boot (with Columbia Pictures), Fire and Ice (with 20th Century-Fox), Flight of the Navigator (with Disney) and Short Circuit and 8 Million Ways to Die (with Tri-Star Pictures). Despite releasing many successful films, PSO ended up running into financial problems and was forced into bankruptcy in 1986, effectively ending the company. The assets of PSO were sold to Vestron Pictures, its home video output partner. A year after PSO ended, Damon founded a new company, with Peter Guber and Jon Peters, called Vision International. PSO is known today as Lions Gate Entertainment, which handles some ancillary rights to the former PSO library.
As for the photosheet cards, Australian photo sheets were produced between 1980 and 1988 so they could have been produced for other Bond films but, to date, no other examples are known to have been produced.
Credits:
Robert Bryan
Peter Lorenz
Lee Pfeiffer
Phil Lisa
Steve Oxenrider
Jon Ogar
Members at Movie Poster Forum (now defunct) and All Poster Forum
Text by Simon Firth. Copyright © 2026 From Sweden with Love. All rights reserved.
Editor's Note:
The author’s collection is the basis for this account. Stay tuned for part III - the James Bond Double Bill eras of English-language lobby cards - to be published soon.
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