‘No Time To Die’ director Cary Joji Fukunaga rules out re-editing

PTI, Apr 8, 2020, 1:01 PM IST

Los Angeles: Filmmaker Cary Joji Fukunaga has dismissed the suggestion that he should polish his upcoming project, James Bond movie No Time To Die, after it was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The film, which marks actor Daniel Craig’s last outing as British spy 007, was set to release this month but in the wake of the global pandemic, the makers decided to push it till November.

Fukunaga, who came aboard as a director after the exit of Danny Boyle, was asked by a fan on Instagram about trimming and polishing the movie, given the extra time he now has before the film’s debut.

In his reply, the director said the final cut of the film is great and there is no need to tinker with it.

Some people have asked me this and although time would have been lovely, we had to put our pencils down when we finished our post production window, which was thankfully before COVID shut down everything else, Fukunaga said.

The short answer is money. Although Bond is a big movie, we still have to weigh cost with value. And like anything, you could tinker endlessly. The movie is great as it is, hope ya’ll will feel same too when it comes out, he added.

“No Time To Die”, which is 25th installment of the action spy franchise, has been plagued by multiple problems since the start.

Last year, Craig suffered an injury during the film’s shooting in Jamaica, for which he underwent a minor surgery in the ankle.

The new film in the Bond franchise was previously set to be directed by Boyle and had a release date of November 8, 2019.

But the Oscar-winning filmmaker exited the project over “creative differences”, along with frequent collaborator, screenwriter John Hodge. The film’s release date was then moved to April 2020.