FALSE - Casino Royale was the FIRST filmed Bond story. It was shot for television. Because the rights had been sold before the Dr. No years, other producers owned this work.
They remade it in the late 1960s but were prohibited from using characters and plotlines because some of them had already appeared in the "other" Bond films.
They made a satirical film in an era when there were almost as many spy comedies as there were cloak and dagger suspense spy films.
There was some sort of option on Thunderball for a Bond tv series that never happened. It was how some other filmmakers owned rights to remake Thunderball as Never Say Never Again. They even considered remaking that story AGAIN.
BTW, the original tv Casino Royale can be found on the MGM DVD for the film. The film itself would have been much better if the past his prime Orson Welles had not gotten Peter Sellers fired from the film. Peter Sellers is among the best thing about that film (Ursella Andress is among the other good things, and their scenes together are great).
I was going to post the same thing in the first comment but figured someone would bring it up..