Universal PicturesNo Time To Die, the 25th James Bond film and Daniel Craig’s final outing as 007, is officially the longest film in the franchise.
Cary Joji Fukunaga (True Detective) is at the helm of this climactic chapter of the Craig era, and it’s set to be an epic hurrah for the star. He was last seen on screen as the world-famous MI6 agent in 2015, in Sam Mendes’s Spectre.
It’s the longest on-screen absence for the series since the six-year gap between Licence to Kill and GoldenEye. To make up for that Bond-less time, No Time To Die is just shy of three hours long.
Universal PicturesThere had been rumours it would crack the three-hour mark, akin to Avengers: Endgame. However, US movie theatre chain Regal Cinemas has now confirmed the runtime as 163 minutes (that’s two hours and 43 minutes).
This makes it the longest film in the franchise, beating Spectre’s former mammoth runtime of 148 minutes. As it will mark the end of Craig’s reign as Bond, making him the longest-running 007 in history – beating Roger Moore’s 12-year stint – a beast of a finale makes sense.
Regal CinemasThe official synopsis for No Time To Die reads: ‘Recruited to rescue a kidnapped scientist, globe-trotting spy James Bond finds himself hot on the trail of a mysterious villain, who’s armed with a dangerous new technology.’
The first trailer teases a huge amount of plot: whatever mystery is plaguing Dr. Madeleine Swan (Léa Seydoux); Lashana Lynch as the new 007 in the field after Bond’s retirement; Ana de Armas as Paloma (unknown yet whether she will be a friend or foe to Bond); and Rami Malek’s villain – who’s ‘more dangerous than anyone he’s ever encountered’ and ‘smarter and stronger than Spectre’, according to the director.
“We aimed to do something extraordinary with this one,” Director Cary Joji Fukunaga gives a behind-the-scenes look at #NoTimeToDie pic.twitter.com/AGZhcv5hD4
— James Bond (@007) February 25, 2020
In a recent interview with Esquire, Fukunaga said:
It was essential to rediscover Bond: where is he? After five years of retirement, who has he become? He’s sort of a wounded animal struggling with his role as a 00. The world’s changed, the rules of engagement aren’t what they used to be, the rules of espionage are darker in this era of asymmetric warfare.
No Time To Die is a culmination of all that Bond has become. With all that he’s seen, all the trauma, all the loss, what is that mission that will be his most challenging and difficult?
My theory: following on from Christopher Waltz’s reveal as Blofeld in the previous film, Malek’s villain ‘Safin’ is, in fact, Dr No. On top of that, Madeleine will be killed off à la On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – allowing the franchise to come full-circle and leave it open for a fresh start.
No Time To Die hits UK cinemas on April 2.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.