The 25th installment in the James Bond franchise was one of the first major movies to pack up and flee from the oncoming Coronavirus pandemic, with No Time to Die originally scheduled for release in April before being delayed until November. Everybody was probably expecting the worst to be over by then, but the world as we know it has completely changed.
Almost every major blockbuster is now gone from the 2020 calendar, and No Time to Die was pushed back until April 2021. However, there’s still no sign of the theatrical industry returning to normal, with AMC Theatres rumored to be running out of cash by the end of the year and the United Kingdom’s biggest chain, Cineworld, having closed their doors for the foreseeable future due to a dearth of content.
The movie business desperately needs a shot in the arm to try and return to any semblance of normality, but the latest reports are claiming that Daniel Craig’s final outing as 007 could end up heading exclusively to streaming, with Netflix and AppleTV+ rumored to be throwing around the kind of numbers that any studio would find hard to turn down in the current climate. And it’s now being said that it’s looking “increasingly likely” that one of them will end up snagging the project.
Longtime producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Brocolli have been adamant up this point that the film will still hit the big screen, but the longer the pandemic has the industry on its knees, the more likely they’ll be to change their minds. After all, Hollywood is already losing out on untold billions in revenue, and if the situation remains dire well into the first quarter of 2021, then anything’s possible. No Time to Die is the jewel in MGM and Eon’s crown, no doubt, but they may well be forced to sell to the highest bidder out of necessity.
