James Bond has been around for a long time, with next year marking the 60th anniversary of Sean Connery’s debut in Dr. No, but few of the 25 installments if any have suffered from the same tortured development and production process as No Time to Die, which is finally coming to theaters in October.
It isn’t quite the longest gap ever between 007 adventures ever, with that honor still falling to the wait between Timothy Dalton’s second and final outing in License to Kill and Pierce Brosnan’s debut in Goldeneye, but only by a couple of months. There was talk that Daniel Craig wouldn’t even return, then original director Danny Boyle dropped out, and that was all before a single frame had been shot on the latest globetrotting espionage adventure for the debonair and not very retired MI6 operative.
Once No Time to Die was in the can, the Coronavirus pandemic came along and hit the movie with a lengthier delay than most. Originally scheduled to hit theaters in April 2020, cinema’s most famous secret agent is finally making his long-awaited comeback in October of this year, so you can understand why the latest teaser really hammers home the whole ‘BOND IS BACK’ thing.
We’ve been saying this for a while, but maybe the theatrical industry will have recovered by then to see No Time to Die hit the heights expected of it at the box office. Either way, it’s set to be a landmark moment for Bond as both the final entry in the Craig era, 25th overall and the last before Amazon gain control of the rights, which producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson have already described as a critical juncture.