 The film co-stars Barbara Bach and Curd Jürgens and was directed by Lewis Gilbert, from a screenplay by Christopher Wood and Richard Maibaum.The film takes its title from Ian Fleming's 1962 novel "The Spy Who Loved Me", the tenth book in the James Bond series, though it does not contain any elements of the novel's plot.The storyline involves a reclusive megalomaniac named Karl Stromberg, who plans to destroy the world and create a new civilisation under the sea.