no time to die
DIRECTOR Cary Joji Fukunaga STARRING Daniel Craig, Rami Malek, Léa Seydoux, Lashana Lynch, Ana de Armas ETA 12 November 2020
Due for release last month, No Time To Die was the first major film casualty of the coronavirus – pushed back more than seven months in response to a global pandemic and widespread cinema closures. But where many other major releases have been banished to streaming as studios attempt to recoup lost earnings, the 25th Bond film is being preserved for precisely where it demands to be seen – the big screen.
After a five-year wait for Daniel Craig’s final mission, the last-minute shift may feel like Le Chiffre’s just taken a knotted rope to Bond fans’ nether regions, but No Time To Die will feel right at home when it’s released in 007’s traditional November release window, and with a budget rumoured to be in the $250 million range, few films affected by the coronapocalypse will benefit quite so fully from a communal viewing experience. As Craig himself told TF for the cover feature of our March issue, “If you can’t get excited about a Bond movie, what can you get excited about?”
Beyond the prospect of (heavily) delayed gratification, there are still plenty of reasons to get excited about No Time To Die. Producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson waited years to ensure they sent Craig out on a high, starting from scratch after replacing Danny
Boyle with True Detective director Cary Joji Fukunaga, enlisting Phoebe Waller-Bridge for a script punch-up and recruiting Best Actor winner Rami Malek as a Bond villain so sinister he makes Blofeld look like a pussycat.
All signs point to No Time To Die being every bit the film demanded of Craig’s final time in the tux. Need further proof? Madeleine Swann herself, Léa Seydoux, has seen it, and has given it her seal of approval. “It’s very moving,” Seydoux says. “When I watched it, I cried, which is weird because I am in it.”
GO BIG SCREEN Because it’s the end of an era for Bond. And after First Man, the work of cinematographer Linus Sandgren should only ever be seen on the biggest screen possible.