‘No Time To Die’ Director Cary Fukunaga Says He Hasn’t ‘Fiddled’ With Movie During Coronavirus Delay
“For all intents and purposes, we had finished the film.”
No Time To Die director Cary Fukunaga apparently is a firm believer in the old maxim, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” That’s one takeaway from an interview he did with Empire.
Another takeaway is this: Fukunaga doesn’t have great luck with viruses. In the space of just 11 years, he has had to deal with two different pandemics affecting movies he directed.
Here’s more from the director’s interview regarding Daniel Craig‘s final turn as James Bond:
With around seven months between No Time To Die’s intended April arrival and its eventual upcoming November release date, that’s plenty of time to make extra adjustments and last-minute changes.
But it sounds like Fukunaga is resisting the temptation to tinker with the film. “You could just fiddle and tweak and it doesn’t necessarily get better,” he says. “For all intents and purposes, we had finished the film. I had mentally finished the film. Mentally and emotionally.”
Fukunaga indicates in the interview that he’s pretty sanguine about the way the coronavirus pandemic forced his movie to delay its opening.
“My first movie, Sin Nombre, came out during swine flu,” Fukunaga tells Empire, referring to the pandemic which occurred in 2009. “[And] it came out in cinemas in Mexico right when the President of Mexico said, ‘Do not go to cinemas.’”
Fukunaga admits to Empire that he “had trauma from that experience.”
“As I was following the news of this, almost every day,” he continues, “I was asking [the producers], ‘What’s the plan, guys? Because this isn’t stopping.’”
Fukunaga also says he doesn’t think “anyone could have foreseen how the world came to a complete standstill, but I did think audiences would not be going to cinemas.”
So he was prepared, in a way.
Here’s a refresher on the movie’s synopsis:
…Bond has left active service and is enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica. His peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help.
The mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist turns out to be far more treacherous than expected, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology.
No Time To Die, the 25th Bond film and Daniel Craig’s swan song behind the wheel of the agent’s souped-up sportscar, is set to premiere in November 2020.
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