Barbara Broccoli got the idea for the film's plot after watching a 1997 Nightline news report about major oil companies competing for control of untapped Caspian Sea oil reserves following the Soviet Union's collapse.

The screenwriters incorporated material from an abandoned Bond screenplay called Reunion with Death, which had been conceived in 1993 with Timothy Dalton still cast as Bond.

Joe Dante and later Peter Jackson were both offered the chance to direct the film; Broccoli lost interest in Jackson after disliking his film The Frighteners, and Alfonso Cuarón also nearly accepted the director job before Michael Apted was hired.

The title is an English translation of the Latin phrase Orbis non sufficit, the motto of Bond's supposed real-world ancestor Sir Thomas Bond, and other rumored titles included Death Waits for No Man, Fire and Ice, Pressure Point and Dangerously Yours.

Before Sophie Marceau was cast as Elektra King, Sharon Stone and Vera Farmiga were considered for the role, until Broccoli saw Marceau's performance in Firelight.

The role of villain Renard was offered to Javier Bardem, who would later play a Bond villain in Skyfall, and to Jean Reno, before Robert Carlyle was cast.

Denise Richards' character Christmas Jones was originally written as a French-Polynesian insurance investigator, but the studio changed her nationality after Marceau's casting; Tiffani Thiessen also auditioned for the role.

This was Desmond Llewelyn's final performance as Q; although not officially retiring, his character was shown training a replacement in the film, and Llewelyn died in a car crash shortly after the premiere.

The pre-title sequence, featuring locations like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Millennium Dome in London, lasts about 14 minutes, making it the longest in the series until No Time to Die in 2021.

During filming of the skiing chase sequence in Chamonix, France, an avalanche struck and delayed production, with the film crew helping in the rescue operation.

The underwater submarine scenes were filmed in the Bahamas, while the exterior of the Kazakhstan nuclear facility was shot at the Bardenas Reales in Navarre, Spain.

The BMW Z8 driven by Bond was the final part of a three-film product placement deal with BMW, but since filming took place before the car's actual release, several mock-ups and models had to be manufactured for the shoot.

Composer David Arnold originally intended to end the film with the song 'Only Myself to Blame', but director Michael Apted discarded it in favor of a remix of the James Bond Theme; the song was instead placed as the final album track.

A rival theme song for the film, also titled 'The World Is Not Enough', was recorded by the band Straw with lyrics referencing several Ian Fleming novels, but it was rejected in favor of the version performed by Garbage.

Denise Richards' performance made the film the first in the Bond series to win a Golden Raspberry Award, as she was named 'Worst Supporting Actress' at the 1999 Razzie Awards.

Entertainment Weekly named it the worst Bond film of all time in 2006, criticizing its plot as so convoluted that even Pierce Brosnan admitted being mystified by it.