Casino Royale is James Bond's canonical first adventure in the Ian Fleming novels and in Daniel Craig's films but it's likely the events of Casino Royale never happened in the original 007 movie timeline. Starting with 1962's Dr. No, the James Bond film series has spawned 25 films and the latest, No Time To Die, will finally release in November. Before Daniel Craig took over 007's tuxedo and rebooted the franchise in 2006's Casino Royale, the Bond movies were one loosely continuous story starring five different 007 actors before that chronology ended with 2002's Die Another Day.
Ian Fleming started it all with his novella, Casino Royale, which was the first of 14 James Bond novels and short story collections. In both the book and in Daniel Craig's movie adaptation, Casino Royale depicted James Bond gambling at the eponymous casino in order to bankrupt Le Chiffre, the treasurer of the Russian secret service. Bond is aided by CIA agent Felix Leiter, who staked 007 with funds to get him back into the game, French agent Rene Mathis, and Vesper Lynd, who Bond falls in love with, only to learn later she was a double agent. However, the James Bond movies produced by Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli of Eon Productions began with Dr. No, an adaptation of Fleming's 6th 007 novel. Afterward, the films were produced completely out of order from the succession of Fleming's books, although that didn't hinder the James Bond movies from becoming global blockbusters.
Since Dr. No is canonically Bond's first movie appearance, the events of the inaugural 007 film set the stage for everything that followed - but did the events of Casino Royale occur off-screen anyway? The answer is probably not. When Dr. No began, James Bond (Sean Connery) was already one of the British Secret Service's top Double-0 agents for about a decade. This timeframe does nod to Casino Royale's 1953 publication date, which happened 9 years prior to Dr. No's release. In Dr. No, Bond had never met Felix Leiter (Jack Lord) before the CIA agent introduced himself at gunpoint to 007 in Jamaica. Since this was Bond's canonical first meeting with Leiter in the movies, there's no way they met at the casino in Royale-les-Eaux, France. This also means that as far as James Bond's original movie canon is concerned, he never had his heart broken by Vesper Lynd. This adds extra significance to James' doomed wife, Tracy Bond (Diana Rigg), as his first true love in 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
The reason why Eon Productions didn't adapt Casino Royale as the first Bond movie instead of Dr. No is that the movie rights to Fleming's first 007 novel belonged to another producer, Charles K. Feldman. Albert Broccoli tried to buy the rights to Casino Royale, but Feldman declined. Eon decided instead that Dr. No would be the most cost-effective story to adapt as the first Bond movie. In 1967, Feldman did get his version of Casino Royale made, but it was a 007 spoof starring David Niven as James Bond. The rights to Casino Royale remained with Columbia Pictures until it was acquired by Sony in 1999; when Sony gained distribution rights to the James Bond franchise, this finally allowed Eon Productions to adapt Casino Royale, which they then used to reboot the 007 franchise starring Daniel Craig as the new James Bond.
Just as well, after James Bond became the longest-running and most successful movie franchise in history, there was also no reason for Eon Productions to adapt Casino Royale, the first 007 story. From Connery's retirement to George Lazenby's one-and-done, Roger Moore's 7-film stint, Timothy Dalton's double-shot, and Pierce Brosnan's final four Bond movies, the 007 franchise always kept Bond's story moving forward. So it was serendipity that Eon gained the rights of Casino Royale in the 2000s when it came time to forge a new James Bond continuity. Daniel Craig got to depict James Bond's origin story to kick off his 007 saga while Casino Royale simply never happened in the history of his predecessors' versions of James Bond.
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