I used to be a member of the James Bond usenet/newsgroup (you weren’t a member of that, were you ?), and that often came up. McClory was prior to his death, IIRC, planning to do yet another remake of TB/NSNA (!) which most of us thought was crazy.
Actually, NSNA in some ways was better than TB. Barbara Carrera was magnificent as the villainess, probably one of the most believably psychotic women, better than Luciana Paluzzi in TB (who herself wasn’t bad). Bernie Casey played the first Black Felix Leiter, and did quite well (better than the current guy, and better than the bland and lifeless Rik Van Nutter’s Leiter in TB). Klaus Maria Brandauer was also fairly good as well, although Adolfo Celi was more a classic-style villain. Interestingly, just like with both films, the weak links were Domino, the female that Bond was trying to protect, Claudine Auger in TB and Kim Basinger in NSNA. Basinger has often been a hit or miss in her films, she either gets them right, or very wrong. Although NSNA missed Q, where they had Alec McCowen in the role utter the hillarious, but extremely un-Q-like line of “I hope there’ll be lots of gratuitous sex and violence.” Desmond Llewellyn’s stodgy Q could never have uttered such a line in a million years. Edward Fox as the bureaucratic M wasn’t bad, but nobody has ever been able to fill the shoes of Bernard Lee (and the current franchise is awkward having Judy Dench playing a maternal character to Bond, although it is an interesting tack).
I didn’t know Blofeld and Fleming had the same birthday, funny stuff.