In 26 movies, James Bond has fought off obsessive autocrats, crazed plutocrats and various vicious nemeses, despite a lifestyle that puts him at serious risk for alcoholism and STDs.
But apparently, coronavirus is too strong for the British super-spy.
On Wednesday, the producers of the iconic film series announced that they have decided to delay the release of the next Bond film, “No Time To Die,” until November.
The film had been scheduled to hit theaters on April 10 in the U.S.
The announcement of the delay came via Twitter:
MGM, Universal and Bond producers, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, announced today that after careful consideration and thorough evaluation of the global theatrical marketplace, the release of NO TIME TO DIE will be postponed until November 2020. pic.twitter.com/a9h1RP5OKd
The decision to delay “No Time To Die” came a day after Bond fans posted an open letter asking that the film release be pushed back to the summer “when experts expect the epidemic to have peaked,” and urging the filmmakers to “put public health above marketing release schedules.”
The letter, written by James Page and David Leigh, the founders of two Bond fan sites, tried to speak a language they figured any person involved in making a film franchise can understand: box office receipts, citing stats for the 2015 Bond film, “Spectre.”
“China and Japan have closed theatres for weeks. The Chinese box-office in January and February 2019 combined to $1.5b. The same period this year has netted just $3.9m - a 99.7% drop.
“Of the countries with large public gatherings banned or restricted, their combined ‘SPECTRE’ box-office was $313m, or 38% of the global haul.”
The letter then reasonably suggested that delaying the film wouldn’t be the end of the world, while appealing to producers’ sense of duty.
“It’s just a movie. The health and well-being of fans around the world, and their families, is more important,” the letter said. “We have all waited over 4 years for this film. Another few months will not damage the quality of the film and only help the box-office for Daniel Craig’s final hurrah.”
A more serious direction for the series doesn’t mean the villain has to have such a boring get-rich-via-the-Cold War scheme, but that’s the case with this double-crossing informant. Being partly foiled because of a talking parrot makes him the worst main villain of them all.
49. Colonel Moon/Gustav Graves (‘Die Another Day’)
We’re not sure what the worst thing about this villain is: that he owns an ice palace, that he had impossible facial reconstruction, or that he created a cockamamie overdone plot to reunify Korea with the power of sunlight?
48. General Georgi Koskov (‘The Living Daylights’)
One of the many villains who is just a stooge working for another, more powerful figure. He also repeats the whole pretending-he’s-a-good guy angle. There’s so much that’s stale about this character and nothing to like about him.
47. Dominic Greene (‘Quantum of Solace’)
Among the many reasons the film was a huge disappointment following the first Craig installment is this screeching weasel of a man. He is one of the most cowardly of all Bond villains and has nothing to make up for it. He’s not even worthy of a good death.
46. Osato (‘You Only Live Twice’)
Not only does this henchman devise awful ways in which to kill Bond, he doesn’t even execute them himself. With such incompetence comes his own death at the hands of his employer, Blofeld.
45. Professor Dent (‘Dr. No’)
Bond movies are well known for villains trying to kill our hero with elaborate devices rather than simply shooting him. Dent’s (and really Dr. No’s) idea is even worse: slipping a tarantula, which wouldn’t even kill 007, into his room. Really, why not just stab him or shoot him or something else quick? After all, when Bond gets his chance, he’ll easily shoot you down in cold blood.
44. Kronsteen (‘From Russia With Love’)
SPECTRE’s man with the plan, but not only is he unable to make his plans work, he can’t convince his boss, Blofeld, that he’s not even the real one to blame. Also, nobody should ever be able to be killed by poisonous shoe spike.
43. Morzeny (‘From Russia With Love’)
He’s not given much, but this henchman comes back into the film late in the game, gets to kill a superior SPECTRE agent with a poisonous shoe spike and heads the climactic boat chase.
42. Helga Brandt (‘You Only Live Twice’)
She’s a failure at being a proper Bond girl by only pretending to be seduced by 007 and then staying loyal to Blofeld by trying to kill the secret agent. She’s a failure as a henchwoman because she doesn’t succeed in killing him. When you’re fed to piranhas by your evil boss, you’re just not good -- or bad -- enough.
41. Fiona Volpe (‘Thunderball’)
Similar to Brandt, Volpe allows herself to get some pleasure out of Bond before having him killed. If she enjoyed it, and it appears she did, she should have switched to 007’s side. Instead, she got to be used as a human shield by the secret agent, which is even worse than how he usually uses women.
40. Karl Stromberg (‘The Spy Who Loved Me’)
It takes a lot more than just being extremely wealthy, devising a world domination scheme and possessing a shark tank to be a Bond villain worthy of his own film. You also need a long-barrelled under-the-table gun that doesn’t shoot bullets that move slower than your foe. Stromberg also doesn’t have that. But he does have the henchman Jaws (who ranks a whole lot higher), so he’s not a complete fool.
39. General Orlov (‘Octopussy’)
By the time you find out the true nature of this Soviet general’s plot, you can’t help but think there must have been a simpler way to carry it out.
38. Elliot Carver (‘Tomorrow Never Dies’)
Similarly, this media mogul weasel goes way overboard with his plans to set off a major world war just for the sake of accruing broadcasting territory. He’s totally insane, and not in a fun, eccentric way like many of Bond’s other villains.
37. Stamper (‘Tomorrow Never Dies’)
Not much better than Carver is a henchman who would work for Carver. His strange senses that reverse pleasure and pain are a bit ridiculous, too.
36. Brad Whitaker (‘The Living Daylights’)
You gotta love Joe Don Baker, as bad an actor as he is. He’s one of those character actors who just exudes a villainous aura. But this true villain of Dalton’s first film isn’t in the movie enough to have too much of an opinion of him. Also, he has the worst Bond villain name of all time.
35. Gobinda (‘Octopussy’)
As Kamal Khan’s bodyguard, he’s basically a henchman’s henchman. He’s not a very memorable one at that, either. Mostly, though, he shouldn’t have been so loyal to his boss, especially when he knows his final fight against Bond atop a flying plane is a bad idea.
34. Miss Taro (‘Dr. No’)
An early double-crossing Bond girl, this secret employee of the titular villain is an attractive femme fatale but not a very fatal one. She’s so uninteresting that 007 just has her easily arrested after he has no more use for her.
33. Tee Hee Johnson (‘Live and Let Die’)
Didn’t anyone tell Tee Hee that metal arms, as cool as they sound, always bring certain doom? See Dr. No.
32. Kamal Khan (‘Octopussy’)
It’s hard not to like Louis Jourdan as the slithery exiled prince, but he’s hardly the true villain. And even if he were, the scheme for which he’s employed is so convoluted it doesn’t even sound like it would work.
31. Elektra King (‘The World Is Not Enough’)
It’s also hard not to like Sophie Marceau taking her role seriously as the first female Bond villain. She’s a neat twist on the usual bad-turned-good Bond girl to be friend before foe. But her oil pipeline plot is a bit much, making us think of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, and she’s the epitome of spoiled rich girls.
30. Miranda Frost (‘Die Another Day’)
As a double-agent who sides with Gustav Graves, her deal is basically a lite mash of main villains from “Goldeneye” and “The World Is Not Enough.” She’s gotta be crafty, though, to have had Bond locked up and tortured in North Korea for over a year. Too bad he doesn’t get to fight her in the end.
29. Katanga/Mr. Big (‘Live and Let Die’)
Fast food restaurants are decent covers for drug operations, but they’re also probably more lucrative in the long run if you don’t turn your customers into junkies by giving them free heroin with their fish dinners. And not just because it obviously ruins the front. He also had some of the sorriest henchmen and suffered the most embarrassing death in the whole franchise.
28. Hugo Drax (“Moonraker”)
He gets points for boldly going where no other Bond villain had gone before -- that being outer space, not his unoriginal plan for world domination. If he’s looking to repopulate the world with a master race, what’s he doing with a freakishly large henchman with metal teeth? Does he plan to kill the offspring of Jaws and Dolly? Not cool. There goes more points for him.
27. Boris Grishenko (‘Goldeneye’)
The nerdy computer hacker henchman has to be a staple of villainy these days, and in “Skyfall” the Grishenkos of the world actually get promoted to the main villain. You can’t go wrong with Alan Cumming, though the character himself is irritatingly cocky.
26. Renard (‘The World Is Not Enough’)
He’s one of the closest things to a superhero movie villain there is in the Bond movies, having a sense of invulnerability brought on by a bullet lodged in his head. And he kind of looks like a zombie Blofeld. Too bad that metal in his brain has made him crazy enough to work with Elektra King.
25. Col. Rosa Klebb (‘From Russia With Love’)
To be fair, she looks pretty badass for a woman who is technically a senior citizen. Yet she never really displays the proper brains or brawn to make her a worthy No. 3 or even any higher on this list. She underestimates Bond’s ability to seduce and his capability with a chair, both very basic among 007’s skills, and both enough to
24. Zao (‘Die Another Day’)
If creepy looks were all you need, this North Korean agent would be number one. But his deformity, having a face embedded with diamond fragments, is also too unbelievable to accept.
23. Dr. Julius No (‘Dr. No’)
He may be the first Bond villain on the big screen, but that doesn’t make him the first name in Bond villainy. His strong metal hands seem cool at first, but they wind up costing him his life. And he has the dishonor of being the first Bond villain to make the stupid mistake of not killing the spy immediately when he refuses to join S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Also, his evil plan to anonymously mess with U.S. rockets winds up being rather paltry compared with those that followed.
22. Emilio Largo (‘Thunderball’)
Like No, he’s just another henchman disguised as a true villain. He works for Blofeld and he’s tasked with a nefarious plot -- to extort the world through nuclear threat -- that is sort of laughable even without all the parodies it has inspired. The eye patch will always make him look awesome, though.
21. May Day (‘A View to a Kill’)
Some may not like this combination of henchman and Bond girl, but we think Grace Jones kills it. At last, they bring a female henchman back into play and she’s more frightening than the old ladies of the past while also serving as a love interest.
20. Dario (‘License to Kill’)
This henchman to the drug lord Sanchez is more notable now because actor Benicio Del Toro eventually went on to great things. He’s memorable, regardless, for taking no issue with shooting a woman in the back, cutting a man’s heart out with a switchblade or attempting to shove Bond into a grinder.
19. Patrice (‘Skyfall’)
An assassin who we barely get to know, he does at least give Bond a run for his money in the new film’s incredibly exciting opening sequence, in which, after leading a great chase, he also does pretty well at hand to hand with 007 atop a train.
18. Mollaka (‘Casino Royale’)
The chase Patrice puts on in the new film calls to mind the even better construction site chase at the opening of the first Craig installment. Parkour may be a joke to some, but the stunts this character pulls off are amazing.
17. Francisco Scaramanga (‘The Man With the Golden Gun’)
He would rank high just for being played by Christopher Lee, and he should rank low both for how cowardly he is in direct opposition and how easily he is killed. But this wealthy assassin is an especially enjoyable villain for all of his toys. In another life he might have made an interesting gadget-dependent superhero. He also earns points for killing his employer in order to take possession of the thing he’s hired to acquire. It’s not always cool being someone else’s minion.
16. Irma Bunt (‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’)
A vast improvement on Klebb, who she is obviously modeled after, this elder redhead henchwoman has none of her predecessor’s awkwardness. She also had the honor of killing Bond’s wife and, as far as we know, went on living in great health for decades to come with no mention of her death or capture in future films.
All five of these hitters were drafted highly in fantasy baseball leagues. So far, they have not lived up to their ADPs — and that's an understatement. Scott Pianowski analyzes.
