Fans waiting for the latest installment of the James Bond franchise, No Time To Die, will have to wait an additional seven months.
Although the film was easily ready to meet its announced release date of April 10 in the United States, it has been announced today that the film is being pushed back to next fall due to concerns stemming from the global spread of the coronavirus.
The new international release date for No Time To Die is November 12 with a US rollout on November 25. That puts the film right in the middle of the start of the holiday movie season. Currently Marvel Studios’s The Eternals starts the month off on November 6 and the goant monster rumble Godzilla Vs Kong debuts on the 20th.
The move does not come as that big of a surprise, however. Fears about the coronavirus have been building in the US over the past two weeks, especially as reports are starting to come in of infected people in large population centers such as Seattle and Manhattan. Currently, cinemas in China, Italy, South Korea and Japan are closed due to coronavirus fears and these closures have had a significant impact on the box office returns for current Hollywood product overseas.
With No Time To Die sporting a budget of somewhere above the $200 million mark, the move positions the film into a time frame when it is hoped that these cinemas will be back open and ready to sell tickets to the highly anticipated final outing of Daniel Craig as the iconic British secret agent. It is these foreign markets that are key in helping the film reach profitability.
This is the first major film that has announced a date change due to the coronavirus, but by no meams will it he thw last.
It remains to be seen if other films will shift their release date due to similar concerns. It is also unclear as to what kind of impact shifting a number of big films towards the end of the year could have on their individual prospects if the season were to become too overcrowded.
