The Big Picture

• No Time to Die humanizes James Bond, ending Daniel Craig's tenure with emotional depth.
• The film faced production hurdles before a successful theatrical release in 2021.
• No Time to Die revived the movie theater experience and set the bar high for the next Bond.

No Time to Die stands out in the pantheon of James Bond movies, particularly because of how it ends Daniel Craig's tenure as the super spy. This is a Bond who's more or less given up the spy game to be with the love of his life, Madeline Swann (Léa Seydoux). Part of what makes No Time to Die unique is the creatives behind the camera; director Cary Joji Fukunaga and writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge continued the trend of humanizing Craig's bond, taking it to the extreme by showing that he was actually mortal. Prior to its release, No Time to Die weathered a rocky production process that saw a director exit, release dates get delayed, and even a struggle for the movie rights.

'No Time to Die' Lost Danny Boyle Over Script Differences

No Time to Die first entered active development in 2016, when longtime Bond screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade started mapping out the story. During that time, questions about who'd direct the film arose. Both Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve were even in the running before Nolan confirmed he wouldn't be directing and Villeneuve chose to develop Dune instead. Finally, Danny Boyle boarded the project in 2018, but he and screenwriter John Hodge left the project in 2018. Boyle would later confirm that he left the project in solidarity with Hodge. “I work in partnership with writers and I am not prepared to break it up … We were working very, very well, but they didn’t want to go down that route with us. So we decided to part company," Boyle said in an interview with the Guardian. “What John Hodge and I were doing, I thought, was really good. It wasn’t finished, but it could have been really good … You have to believe in your process and part of that is the partnership I have with a writer.”

Fukunaga boarded No Time to Die shortly after, with Waller-Bridge fleshing out the script at a later date. The story for No Time to Die went through a number of incarnations. At one point Fukunaga considered having a great deal of it take place inside Bond's head, as it would have been revealed that he was still trapped by Blofield (Christoph Waltz) after the events of Spectre. Waller-Bridge would end up contributing the best part of No Time to Die as she wrote a meatier role for Paloma (Ana de Armas). Originally a simple CIA contact Bond meets in Spain, Paloma takes part in an action sequence that proves she's in a different league than the other Bond girls. Ironically, even though Hodge and Boyle had long left the project, Hodge ended up having the biggest impact on the script; he'd previously floated the idea of Bond having a child, and No Time to Die reveals that Bond and Swann had a daughter!

Studios Fought Over 'No Time to Die'

No Time to Die didn't just have creative issues to worry about. Prior to its production, the biggest question surrounding the James Bond franchise was where it was going to make its home. Sony, who had a deal to co-produce Bond films with MGM and Eon Productions, lost the rights in 2015. This led to five major studios entering a bidding war for the rights: Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox, and Annapurna all threw their hats into the ring, as did Sony. Established IP, after all, is a major draw and the Bond films remain one of the strongest pieces of IP out there. Eventually, MGM would secure the North American rights while Universal handled international distribution, a deal that is still in place even with Amazon's purchase of MGM.

One major obstacle ended up hindering No Time to Die: the release date. After abandoning its February 2020 release date after Boyle's departure, plans were made for an April release. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, led to the release date being pushed further and further back, which turned out to prove quite costly for MGM. A breakdown by Variety revealed that MGM had secured a hefty $301 million budget for No Time to Die, and there were even brief talks with Netflix and Apple TV+ to potentially lease out the final Bond adventure for their streaming services. The delays even affected theaters, as No Time to Die's shifting release dates were the "last straw" in Cineworld's decision to close all Regal theaters in the U.S. Eventually, No Time to Die was finally released in theaters on October 8, 2021.

'No Time to Die' Revived the Movie Theater Experience

No Time to Die wound up being a commercial success, topping the list of highest-grossing films in 2021. While critical reception remains split (mainly over the lengthy runtime) the general consensus was that this was a film worth going to the movie theaters for. Prior to No Time to Die releasing, the state of the theatrical experience was up in the air. Moves like Warner Bros. deciding to do day-and-date releases on Max didn't exactly alleviate those fears. But the fact that moviegoers turned up for No Time to Die proved that the theatrical experience was still intact and you just have to have a big enough hook to draw moviegoers. In this case, the hook was that this was the final Bond film starring Craig, who gives his all to Bond's swan song. Despite its rather rocky road to the big screen, No Time to Die proved that James Bond could still be a draw at the box office, which should bolster MGM and Eon's spirits as the production companies gear up to find the next actor to slip into Bond's tuxedo.

No Time to Die is available to rent from Prime Video in the U.S.

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