Even though No Time to Die had long since finished shooting by the time the pandemic came along and ground the planet to a standstill, the added post-production time could have conceivably given the creative team the impetus to make some changes to the narrative.
One of the driving forces behind the plot is the looming threat of a bioweapon, and it would be fair to suggest that many audiences had grown weary of dealing with a real-life biological threat, never mind a fictional one. Of course, that didn’t stop the 25th installment in the James Bond franchise from earning close to $775 million at the box office, because at the end of the day it’s still escapism on a massive scale.
Speaking to ScreenRant to promote No Time to Die‘s home video release, star Naomie Harris admitted that while nothing was altered to reflect the COVID-19 crisis, she still found it strange that the outlandish plot of a 007 epic wound up reflecting the real-world situation at the time it was released.
“It was just bizarre because I always find myself in films that are in some way reflective of what’s going on in society. But at the time of filming them, you have no idea that that’s going to be the case. So it just always feels really weird when that happens.”
No Time to Die ended up sitting on the shelf for eighteen months, making it one of the longest-delayed titles of the COVID era, but it still went on to become one of the highest-grossing movies to have hit the big screen since 2019, accidental prescience or not.
