It was directed by Michael Apted, from an original story and screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Bruce Feirstein.

During his assignment, Bond unravels a scheme to increase petroleum prices by triggering a nuclear meltdown in the waters of Istanbul.

Filming locations included Spain, France, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and the UK, with interiors shot at Pinewood Studios.

Despite receiving mixed reviews, with the plot and Denise Richards's casting frequently targeted for criticism, The World Is Not Enough earned over $361 million worldwide, becoming the eighth highest grossing film of 1999.

Bond chases the assassin by boat on the Thames to the Millennium Dome, where she attempts to escape via hot air balloon.

Following an earlier attempt on his life by MI6, Renard was left with a bullet embedded in his brain, which makes him immune to pain but will eventually kill him.

There, Bond grows suspicious as Elektra immediately loses $1 million on a game of high card draw, and discovers that her head of security, Sasha Davidov, is secretly in league with Renard.

In Azerbaijan, Bond warns M that Elektra may not be as innocent as she appears, and may have succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome under Renard's capture.

An alarm sounds, revealing that the stolen bomb is attached to a pipeline inspection pig heading towards the oil terminal.

Bond gets a signal from the locator card at the Maiden's Tower before Zukovsky's henchman Bull blows up the command centre.

Bond is taken to the tower, where Elektra tortures him with a garrote and reveals that she cut off part of her ear to make her kidnapping look more believable.

In November 1997, a month prior to the release of Tomorrow Never Dies, Barbara Broccoli watched a news report on Nightline detailing how the world's major oil companies were vying for control of the untapped oil reserves in the Caspian Sea in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, and suggested that controlling the only pipeline from the Caspian to the West would be an appropriate motivation for a potential Bond villain.

[4] Hoping to find a director capable of eliciting strong performances from women, the producers eventually hired Michael Apted, as his work with Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner's Daughter, Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas in the Mist and Jodie Foster in Nell has earned all three actresses Oscar nominations (with Spacek winning).

The Daily Telegraph claimed that the British Government prevented some filming in front of the actual MI6 Headquarters at Vauxhall Cross, citing a security risk.

In London outdoor footage was shot of the SIS Building and Vauxhall Cross with several weeks filming the boat chase on the River Thames eastwards towards the Millennium Dome, Greenwich.

[29] "Only Myself to Blame", written by Arnold and Don Black and sung by Scott Walker, is the 19th and final track on the album and its melody is Elektra King's theme.

It is the fifth Bond theme co-written by Black, preceded by "Thunderball",[30] "Diamonds Are Forever",[31] "The Man with the Golden Gun",[32] and "Tomorrow Never Dies".

[40] At that time MGM signed a marketing partnership with MTV, primarily for American youths, who were assumed to have considered Bond as "an old-fashioned secret service agent".

As a result, MTV broadcast more than 100 hours of Bond-related programmes immediately after the film was released, most being presented by Denise Richards.

The film became the first in the Bond series to win a Golden Raspberry when Denise Richards was chosen as "Worst Supporting Actress" at the 1999 Razzie Awards.

[45] The initial release of the DVD includes the featurette "Secrets of 007", which cuts into "making of" material during the film; the documentary "The Making of The World Is Not Enough"; two commentary tracks—one by director Michael Apted, and the other by production designer Peter Lamont, second unit director Vic Armstrong, and composer David Arnold; a trailer for the PlayStation video game, and the Garbage music video.

The site's critical consensus reads: "Plagued by mediocre writing, uneven acting, and a fairly by-the-numbers plot, The World Is Not Enough is partially saved by some entertaining and truly Bond-worthy action sequences.

[49] Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert said the film was a "splendid comic thriller, exciting and graceful, endlessly inventive", and gave it three-and-a-half stars out of four.

[52] Antonia Quirke from The Independent said that the film "is certainly less definitively feeble than other recent Bond offerings, with an at least two-dimensional female character in the bold and oval Marceau.

[54] Richards was widely criticized for not being credible in the role of a nuclear scientist, with Variety calling her "the least plausible nuclear physicist in the history of movies, who makes even the electrochemist Elisabeth Shue played in 1997's The Saint sound like a Nobel laureate"; Nathan Rabin panned her performance and called it "so laughably awful that the film comes to a dead stop whenever she's on screen".

[59] Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian called her "terrific: sexy, stylish, with a really beautiful face entirely innocent of the cosmetic surgeon's art".

[60] Pete Debruge of Variety wrote in 2012 that "[The World Is Not Enough] presents a conflicted persona torn between the corny antics of the Roger Moore era and the grim seriousness of where things would eventually go under Daniel Craig’s tenure.

It also contains a dose of Timothy Dalton-esque toughness [...] Much of what made Brosnan such a great Bond is thrust into the backseat by lame jokes and a premature attempt to mix up the formula", concluding that it was "nothing but a reversion to the franchise's most adolescent tendencies".

[57] Entertainment Weekly picked it as the worst Bond film of all time in 2006, saying it had a plot "so convoluted even Pierce Brosnan has admitted to being mystified".

The novel also gave the cigar girl/assassin the name Giulietta da Vinci and retained a scene between her and Renard that was cut from the film.