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I'd say almost certainly, if this is the impression everyone is getting. Would love to listen to it myself to give my own thoughts 😂
Why James Bond will never be the same again — the inside story of No Time to Die
https://thetimes.co.uk/article/why-bond-will-never-be-the-same-again-after-no-time-to-die-zg8sn8d6l
Full article:
The plot twisted and turned before the arrival of a doomsday pandemic. And then there’s what may yet prove to be the biggest shock of all. Just when it seemed that No Time to Die might ensure the future of cinemas by bringing back hordes of ticket-buyers, the company that co-owns the Bond franchise was snapped up by Jeff Bezos’s Amazon.
Is Bond’s fate now in the hands of a goodie who might turn out to be a baddie? Or is Bezos a baddie who may yet turn out to be a goodie? Is the 007 of so many memories about to turn into a streaming franchise? Will the next Bond be a white man, a black man, a woman, or even an American?
Where does Bond, one of Britain’s biggest cultural exports, go from here? If anyone knows it should surely be the daughter of Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, the super-producer who made the first Bond film — Dr No — in 1962. Yet not even Barbara Broccoli is prepared to guess what kind of Bond comes next. “We’ll see what the future brings,” she tells me. “But who knows?”
Last month, after six years of reporting the ups and downs of a project that sometimes seemed cursed by the ghosts of villains Bond had offed, I spoke to Broccoli and the producer Michael G Wilson, between them guardians of the franchise for 75 years.
“We’re very eager to get the film out,” says Broccoli, 61. In what may be the understatement of the decade, Wilson, 79, adds: “It has been a long build-up.”
To see how we reached this point, I went back to the beginning and interviews I’ve had with everyone from Daniel Craig to Rami Malek about No Time to Die, a film that, it seems, is always just about to be released . . .
Craig drops a Thunderball
The trouble starts weeks before Spectre, the 24th James Bond film, is even released. It is six years ago, before the Brexit vote and President Trump. On October 7, 2015, Craig is asked while doing press for Spectre if he could imagine doing another Bond film. After a decade in the role it would be his fifth Bond assignment. “Now?” he tells Time Out. “I’d rather slash my wrists.”
Cue media hysteria. Headlines erupt. Suddenly production of the next blockbuster seems to be in disarray (even though Craig was talking about not doing a new 007 film right away, as opposed to never). The scene is set — knives out for No Time to Die before a word of the script has been written.
Danny’s Licence to Thrill
In May 2018 Danny Boyle is announced as the man who will make Craig’s final hurrah. This is the maestro of the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, who had Craig jump out of the sky over east London — with the Queen. A lot of big names had been mooted, including the Inception director Christopher Nolan. However, Boyle, a cult Oscar-winner with Slumdog Millionaire, is an exciting, happy fit.
“It’s a great idea!” Boyle says of the script he pitched to Broccoli and Wilson, which is rumoured to include the death of Bond. The film is to start production in December, with a release date of October 25, 2019 — four years after Spectre. Full steam ahead.
In August there’s an announcement on the James Bond Twitter account with Broccoli, Wilson and Craig as the signatories. It reads: “Due to creative differences Danny Boyle has decided to no longer direct Bond 25.” Perhaps he did want to kill off the figurehead after all. And it wasn’t a popular idea.
Boyle will say later: “We were working very well, but they didn’t want to go down that route. It is just a great shame.” What a mess; now the release date is under threat. “We came to the conclusion on both sides that we weren’t making the same movie,” Broccoli says when I meet her and Craig more than a year later. “And so we were grown up about it and parted ways.”
“I must say,” Craig interrupts. “It happens a lot in films, and the fact this is a Bond movie it becomes this ‘Oh my God, the curse of Bond!’ I’ve been involved in a lot of projects where this has happened and it was amicable and adult.” “And we moved on,” Broccoli adds.
Never Say Never — Again!
Another tweet bombshell drops on September 20. “Bond 25 will begin filming under the helm of director Cary Joji Fukunaga.” The script is overhauled and the release date pushed back to 2020. However, cameras are set to start rolling soon, with locations including Italy, Jamaica, Norway and London. Fukunaga’s CV is more audacious than most directors who have taken on Bond, his work ranging from Jane Eyre to the technically astounding first series of the TV show True Detective. The director is aware of the pressure.
“You always want to go out strong,” he says. “Daniel wants to end his run as memorably as possible. For me, though, because this is my first Bond, I also want to do the best possible. I don’t want to be the one making the worst Bond.”
Doctor Oh No
A couple of months into filming, on May 22, 2019, while sprinting for a shot in Jamaica, Craig slips awkwardly. His ankle requires surgery and the actor is off set for a fortnight. In June there is an explosion at Pinewood that injures a crew member. “It’s blown part of the Bond stage roof off,” a source wails.
“This may be hard to believe,” Craig tells me that August, all fixed up, calling from the set of No Time to Die, “but I love the fact I’m Bond. It is one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done. But it takes a lot of energy and I’m getting old. I’m getting creaky.”
He is in an ebullient mood. The big news, though, is that hotshot Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the creator of Fleabag, has been given a writing role on No Time to Die. When I met Craig in 2015 we talked about the misogyny in Bond. “Bond’s a misogynist,” he said then. I ask if Waller-Bridge — only the second woman to have a writing credit on Bond — has been brought in to help the films be a little less, well, misogynistic?
“Well, Phoebe coming on . . .” Craig begins, politely, before pausing to change tack. “Look,” he says bluntly. “We’re having a conversation about Phoebe’s gender here, which is f***ing ridiculous. She’s a great writer. Why shouldn’t we get Phoebe on to Bond? That’s the answer to that. She’s a f***ing great writer.”
And, finally, what will he miss most about Bond? “I’ll miss my friends,” he says. “I’ve worked with these people for 15 years and it will be a real jar. This is a special atmosphere . . . We’re trying to make the best f***ing Bond movie we can. You have to go for the biggest thing. Can we make it better than we did before? That’s my attitude.”
Mrs Bond, we’ve been expecting you . . .
Four months later, in New York, Craig and Broccoli are side by side, gearing up for the release of No Time to Die. They have a great rapport. He is intense, but not in an unwelcoming way. She is calm. We talk, of course, about the vexed issue of Craig’s successor.
“He can be any colour, but he is male,” Broccoli had said recently. “We should be creating new characters for women — strong female characters. I’m not particularly interested in taking a male character and having a woman play it. Women are far more interesting than that.”
Is it, I ask Craig, hard to let go? “It was very sad to finish the last day.” Will he have a say in his successor? “No, and I don’t want to. But I will be front and centre watching that film.”
If Craig is Bond’s past, then the British actress Lashana Lynch may be its future. I meet her next. She plays the MI6 agent Nomi in No Time to Die, and it’s rumoured she stands in for 007 when he’s off-duty early in the film. In many ways this black woman’s role is the biggest clue as to how much the modern Bond has changed — in Dr No Sean Connery casually instructed the nearest black man to fetch his shoes.
It seems from early footage that Nomi is now Bond’s equal. Care to comment? “It can be swung that way,” she says. “You could say she thinks she is more capable of getting the job done in 2020, since her methods are up to date.”
From China with Love
Rami Malek, the villain in No Time to Die, arrives at a packed bar in New York on March 3, 2020. The place is dark, noisy — a table has been booked under his alias. This is the Before World, when people could travel and meet freely. We talk about Covid and realise we know very little about it. “I was coming here earlier,” he says, “and I had just gone on a long run and I had a bit of a cough. I was acutely aware of what that might look like.”
We order wine (red), talk about childhood heroes (the US children’s presenter Mr Rogers), his Oscar-winning role in Bohemian Rhapsody (“Very proud”). We also talk about Donald Trump — because there is a presidential election coming and he is of Arab descent. He grew up with stereotypes on screen. “It’s hard to pinpoint one thing I found offensive, because a lot was.”
He is adamant that his Bond villain, Safin, is not played as a stereotype. I ask nervously if Safin is a baddie planning to spread a supervirus around the world.
“I was sitting at dinner thinking that would have been a compelling storyline, given what we’re going through right now,” Malek says. But they would not cancel the movie, right? “Can you imagine?” he gasps.
Four hours after I land in London the next day, No Time to Die is delayed. “After thorough evaluation of the global theatrical marketplace,” the statement reads, “the release of No Time to Die will be postponed until November 2020.”
That sound? Hundreds of lucrative 007 adverts and marketing campaigns with the world’s biggest brands being ripped up as the world goes into lockdown. Cinemas get boarded up. There is a global pause on fun.
“There were so many things to consider,” Broccoli says this August. “First, the health of the audience. Then you have other concerns about the film business and what it does to cinema owners. Ultimately we decided the best thing to do was delay. We took heat and then other people followed suit.”
Die? Another Day
After a summer of relative freedom with films coming out in cinemas, No Time to Die is moved again on October 2, 2020, to April 2021. The jitters are put down to trouble on two fronts: Covid variants threaten a new blight and box office for Nolan’s blockbuster Tenet is terrible. In normal times Tenet would expect to gross about $1 billion. In the pandemic it took $363.7 million and lost money.
“We understand the delay will be disappointing, but we now look forward to sharing No Time to Die next year,” the producers say. Just two days later the UK’s biggest cinema chain, Cineworld, announces the indefinite closure of all its screens. It writes to the government to say that the industry has become “unviable” because blockbusters are being shelved.
With an estimated 5,500 jobs at immediate risk, Cineworld’s timing points the finger at Bond. No Time to Die was supposed to be the film that saved cinemas, and its loss is a hammer blow. Anger mounts, with some claiming that, with ventilation and social distancing, cinemas are safe.
“Well, it certainly wasn’t safe,” Wilson says. “As far as the government was concerned. As I recall, other people changed their dates ahead of us. We held on as long as we could until it just wasn’t viable.”
One thing is clear for the makers of Bond — this film is not for streaming. “The fact is,” Broccoli adds, “we’ve stuck to insisting on a theatrical release, which is ultimately the most important thing for the exhibitors. We’re holding out, believing cinemas will be coming back in a big way.”
Diamonds Aren’t Forever
With the latest Bond in limbo, the first Bond, Sean Connery, dies on October 31. He was 90. “He defined an era,” Craig says. “He helped to create the modern blockbuster.” I ask Broccoli and Wilson what the biggest differences are between Connery and Craig. “It’s hard to compare,” Wilson says. “He was a different kind of leading man. Daniel is on much more of an emotional journey in his films — his Bond is a living, breathing person who gets wounded emotionally.”
“He’s brought humanity,” Broccoli says. “When we used to construct these stories we’d ask, ‘What is the mission?’ But with Daniel we also discuss what we will put Bond through emotionally. Not just physical sacrifice but betrayals, broken hearts. It’s a three-dimensional character as opposed to, as Bond is described in books, a silhouette.”
For Your Eyes? If Only
This time, no statement. Just a tweet on January 22 with the fourth and, fingers crossed, final delayed date — September 30.
The Man with the Golden Platform
As if the tumult of No Time to Die’s serial stalling was not enough for Broccoli and Wilson, they now have to deal with Bezos, Jeffrey Bezos. In May Amazon sweeps in to buy MGM Studios, which jointly owns Bond with Broccoli and Wilson’s production company, Eon. The deal, for $8.45 billion, is still to be approved by the US regulatory body the Federal Trade Commission, but nobody expects it to be overturned.
“MGM has a catalogue of much-loved intellectual property,” Bezos explains, by which he mostly means Bond. “We can reimagine and develop that IP for the 21st century,” he adds, which could mean anything.
Eon still appears to hold creative control, but it seems highly unlikely Amazon would buy Bond just so archive films can be put on a shopping website.
What, I ask Broccoli, does the Amazon deal mean for the future of Bond? “The truth is we don’t know. Until the deal is approved and we are able to get into deep discussions with them we don’t know. At the moment we’re not really any more enlightened about what they want to do and how they see things and how we fit in.
“We’re hoping that they are going to want a strong theatrical line-up [ie cinema releases]. Let us hope that’s the case, but we won’t know until later this year, or next year, what the plans are.”
The challenge facing Bond is that when huge corporations buy huge franchises they tend to milk them — remember Disney buying Star Wars and turning it into many more spin-offs, with side characters and TV series. So far Bond has avoided dilution, but Amazon might want to go the Disney way.
“We haven’t done that because, for us, Bond is the character — it would be like doing Hamlet without Hamlet,” Broccoli says. “We’ve been interested in making Bond films and they take a long time to make and a lot goes into them. That’s why they’ve survived almost 60 years. We’ll see what the future brings, but who knows?”
Tomorrow Never Dies
In August, as I speak to Broccoli and Wilson via Zoom, No Time to Die seems to be, believe it or not, imminent. The producers are friendly, strikingly calm given the year they have had and grateful for the Covid jabs that have changed everything for cinema audiences.
We talk about who will replace Craig.
“Daniel’s made an indelible impression,” Wilson says. “So it’s inevitable that what he brought will be, in some way, incorporated. We don’t have any frontrunners — we haven’t even thought about it — but whoever it is will take on the role and adapt the character to their personality. It’s always been the case.”
Before Craig brought that depth, the candidates for 007 were almost identical: all strong, handsome, white. Now actors of all types and ethnicities are mentioned as possibles. But no actor will win universal acclaim in our world of social media and identity politics.
“It’s a great compliment people take it so personally,” Broccoli says. “But it’s tough on the person that steps in. It’s not fair, but it’s the way of the world, with the internet being the way it is. Somebody sitting at a computer seems to carry the same weight as the most respected journalist.
“It’s a big decision for us because we’re entering into a partnership with an actor. It’s not like casting a movie when you find the best actor at the time — it’s about resetting the whole template for the movies to come. So it’s not just about what colour hair an actor has and if they fit a certain type — it’s about where you want to take the movies and what you want to say. And we have to make that decision. We’re not going to make it based on polls.”
Good luck, I joke — at which the producers laugh. A sort of wild, panicked laugh. “Bonne chance is right!” Wilson says. “And right now I’m not even going to think about it.” “I’m still in denial,” Broccoli adds.
Will the World Be Enough?
Tickets went on sale for the UK release of No Time to Die last week — will it outdo the UK’s highest-grossing film in the UK since the pandemic began? That would be Peter Rabbit 2. Well, in the first 24 hours customers booked as many seats at Vue cinemas as booked for Spectre in its first four and a half weeks. Everyone hopes it’s worth the wait.
I think that the attack on the C140 he is in is successful, and BOnd having that and Felix on his mind decides to stay and fight.
come from?
A scene of the C-130 that Q is in shows that there are missiles going toward it in the second full trailer. The first pair of missiles miss, but at the last frame we can see another pair of missiles, that seem directly aimed at the plane.
A while back I also mentioned this point, way before this footage during the first round of marketing in Feb 2020. There was a lot of focus on the marketing of Q, esp the short about him and Bond's relationship, as well as the watch promotions and I wondered if this was a sign something were to happen to him.
Thanks!
Although I suppose that would lead to a lot of jumping around at the start of the film. Doubtful, but a possibility.
Maybe Bond is stalking around the lair alone, Safin’s voice taunting him over a PA of some kind, leading to the shot?
I maintain whatI have always thought, we open immediately on Norway and the Safin / Young Maddie scene, then studio logos, then gunbarrel.
Wanna hear it now or wait?
Is now an option?!
I would love to hear it now! So hyped
Yes it is. DM in a few seconds
Yes, the link was floating online since this morning. The Bond Bulletin even posted a review on YT.
NOW PLEASE!
I’m hearing rumors that
Amazing!
Could I get a listen??
I'm hoping the shot from the trailer isn't in the film. It looked to staged- it was probably shot for the trailer alone.