The new James Bond movie release gets delayed again; Is the World movie industry collapsing?

After several reschedules, the new James Bond movie ‘No Time to Die’ gets postponed after several delays in the previous months, due to the global pandemic. Bond’s exit leaves Wonder Woman 1984, currently set to debut on Christmas Day, as one of the few big movies still on the 2020 slate. Other big-budget flicks, including Marvel’s Black Widow and a Top Gun sequel, have also been delayed until next year.

No Time to Die, from MGM and Comcast Corp’s Universal Pictures, was set to hit the big screen in April 2020 before being delayed until November. The new date is April 2, 2021. A Fast & Furious sequel scheduled for that date was moved to May 28.

The movie studios and producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli said the Bond film was delayed “in order to be seen by a worldwide theatrical audience”. “We understand the delay will be disappointing to our fans but we now look forward to sharing No Time To Die next year,” they said on the official James Bond Twitter account.

The decision follows disappointing efforts to get Americans back into multiplexes after the pandemic shuttered cinemas worldwide in March. While AMC Entertainment, Cineworld and others have reopened many locations, crowds have been thin, and cinemas in the major markets of New York and Los Angeles remain shut.

“Studios are having to continually confront the hard facts of a very challenging marketplace,” said Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian. But he added that the Bond delay showed that producers believe cinemas were the “preferred destination” for the film. Some movies have skipped the big screen and headed straight to streaming services.

The Bond franchise is one of the movie world’s most lucrative, with 2015’s Spectre raking in $880 million at the box office worldwide, while Skyfall in 2012 grossed more than $1 billion globally.

No Time to Die was produced under a budget of around 200 million dollars and was Daniel Craig’s last movie as James Bond and hence had several reasons for the fans to anticipate deep.

Meanwhile, famous Hollywood producer James Cameron Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese joined forces with movie theatre owners on Wednesday in an appeal for financial help, saying they feared for the future of the industry.

In a letter to the leaders of the US Senate and House of Representatives, they said the coronavirus pandemic had dealt a devastating blow to cinemas and that without funds “theatres may not survive the impact of the pandemic.”

The letter was signed by more than 70 directors and producers along with the National Association of Theatre Owners, the Directors Guild of America and the Motion Picture Association.