No Time to Lose: Hollywood Pins Its Hopes on Bond Director Cary Fukunaga
The 'No Time to Die' helmer on the last-minute decision to move the film, being the first American to steer the franchise and ushering 007 into a post-MeToo era: "You can’t change Bond overnight, but you can change the world around him."
The first time this THR reporter met Cary Fukunaga was on Feb. 26, 2020, at London’s Goldcrest postproduction facilities. The director was standing in front of a wall filled with 100-plus index cards featuring scene titles like “Bond loses control.” He was just days away from delivering to MGM his cut of No Time to Die, the 25th James Bond installment, which would mark Daniel Craig’s final outing as 007 and a major coup for Fukunaga, the first American to helm a Bond. The world premiere was to take place at Royal Albert Hall in a month.
“I try not to think about the box office pressures,” he told me at the time, “although right now obviously I’m very concerned about coronavirus.” Bond producer and gatekeeper Barbara Broccoli downplayed concerns about how the virus might affect the $245 million film and its expectations to eclipse the previous Bond’s worldwide haul of $881 million. “It sounds like the Chinese authorities are doing everything they can to contain it,” she said. But Fukunaga couldn’t shake the feeling that history was about to repeat itself. His first feature, the Spanish-language crime drama Sin Nombre, took a box office beating when swine flu shuttered theaters in Mexico in 2009. “Obviously, you don’t want to take something lightly when people’s lives are at stake,” he said, then paused. “Coronavirus will be very bad for the film.”
