FormerJames Bondactor George Lazenby was among the first filmgoers to seeNo Time to Die, the 25th installment of the long-running franchise. Lazenby, who starred as Bond inOn Her Majesty’s Secret Servicein 1969, recently caught an early screening ofNo Time to Dieat a theater in Los Angeles. Posting a photo of himself next to a promo of the movie featuring Daniel Craig, Lazenby revealed that he’d seenNo Time to Dieand seemed to especially enjoy the music.
“Since it wasn’t feasible for me to be in London for the World premiere I got to see the new Bond here in LA. Interesting choices of music I must say,” Lazenby says in the tweet. He might be referring to an homage to John Barry’s work onOn Her Majesty’s Secret Servicethat Hanz Zimmer worked into the score forNo Time to Die.
There are five actors who’ve played James Bond on the big screen over the years.George Lazenbyhad the especially challenging task of following Sean Connery, the original Bond. After Connery had starred as 007 in five movies, Lazenby took over the role for 1969’sOn Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which also starredDame Diana Riggs of Avengers and Game of Thrones fame. Lazenby’s time as Bond was one and done, as Connery slipped back into the tuxedo for the followup movie,Diamonds Are Forever, in 1971.
A Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan later, James Bond is these days played by Daniel Craig.No Time to Dieis the fifth movie to be released starring Craig in the lead role, and it will serve as his final performance. He initially said he would be finished with the role afterSpectre, but has since clarified that he wanted to doNo Time to Dieto give his version of James Bond a more proper sendoff.
“I didn’t think that I was going to do another movie afterSpectre. I genuinely thought that I was going to … just pack it in,” Craig recently told Reuters. “But I’m so happy that I got the chance to come and do this one. And we tied up lots of loose ends. We’ve tried to tell one story with all my Bond movies. It’s like they’re all connected in some way and this one just sort of capped it off.”
Also the longest James Bond movie with a runtime of nearly three hours,No Time to Dieis directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga using a script co-written with Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Along with Daniel Craig, the movie stars Rami Malek, Léa Seydoux, Lashana Lynch, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz, and Ralph Fiennes.
The world premiere ofNo Time to Diewas held at Royal Albert Hall on the 28th of September, followed by an international release on the 30th. Meanwhile,No Time to Diewill premiere in U.S. theaters on Oct. 8. This all follows several major release date delays due to the pandemic. While the role of James Bond will be recast after this movie, with talks reportedly set to start in 2022, the plan moving forward is to keep allJames Bond moviesexclusive to theaters.
