No time to screen... new Bond delayed yet again

WE’VE been expecting Mr Bond to appear again for some time now. And it seems the wait’s having to go on for even longer.

Daniel Craig’s final outing as 007 in No Time To Die has been delayed by the pandemic for the third time, it was announced yesterday. It will now be released globally on October 8.

The highly anticipated film – the 25th instalment in the Bond franchise – was due to hit cinemas in April last year and then November. It was later postponed until April this year so it could ‘be seen by a worldwide theatrical audience’.

But a tweet shared on the official James

Bond Twitter account yesterday said: ‘No Time To Die 8 October 2021.’ The news is a further blow to cinemas that have been forced to shut for months at a time during the lockdowns.

It comes as film studios have pushed back other major releases, including Tom Hanks’ Bios, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, Uncharted and Cinderella.

Mulan, which was expected to be one of the highest-grossing films of the year, instead bypassed cinemas and went straight to Disney Plus. And Wonder Woman 1984 was made available in the US on HBO’s streaming service. But film studio MGM said in October that James Bond is ‘not for sale’ for streaming.

No Time To Die, directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, marks Craig’s fifth and final appearance as the British spy.

It also stars Oscar winner Rami Malek, Lea Seydoux, Lashana Lynch and Ana de Armas. The script was co-written by Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge.