In news that will please all concerned in the production, and all Bond fans everywhere, the new James Bond adventure No Time To Die, starring Daniel Craig for the last time as Bond, has been breaking box office records in the UK since its general release on 30th September. After a great premiere at the Royal Albert Hall in London, attended by two sets of Royalty as well as the main cast, the movie hit UK screens two days later.
According to the latest figures, No Time To Die will clearly boost the beleaguered UK cinema industry, which has been somewhat battered by the recent Covid pandemic, and was placing its hopes in the new 007 movie. Mr. Bond, it seems, has more than delivered!
More than 30,000 people attended midnight screenings for the new film, while 1,620,000 advance cinema tickts were sold for the first four days of opening. Moreovover, the opening day box office success in Britain was better than Craig’s previous Bond movie Spectre if not quite as good as 2012’s Skyfall.
The film is also being heavily promoted and publicised across the UK cinema market. No Time To Die is set to have the widest theatrical release of any movie in British history with 772 cinemas playing the film. This is 25 more than the previous record-holder Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker. Movie bosses are also increasingly confident that No Time To Die will perform well in the key international markets (releases in October, 2021, include France, Russia, China, and the USA).
A Diamond Is Forever
To reinforce the growing sense of confidence in the movie’s box office performance, there have been overwhelmingly positive critical reviews of No Time To Die in the UK’s press and wider media. The London Times newspaper, for example, gave it five stars, calling the film ‘magnificent’ and a ‘huge thundering epic’. Other newspapers have also awarded the film five-star ratings, including the Daily Mirror, the Guardian, The Scotsman and the Daily Telegraph. Robbie Collin, writing in the Telegraph, summed up much of the enthusiasm with: ‘We’ve been expecting you, Mr. Bond, for quite some time – and what a joy and relief it is to have you back’. Brian Viner, in his review for the Daily Mail, echoed this by saying: ‘No Time To Die is a triumph: an explosive, tense, daring, and most of all surprising adventure’. The showbiz commentator, Baz Bamigboye, also writing in the Daily Mail, urged people to ‘see it on the biggest cinema screen you can find’.
The positive reviews for the new film were also echoed in the UK’s Sunday newspapers on 3rd October, on the all-important first weekend of the movie’s UK opening. The Observer newspaper, while noting that the film is ‘flabby’ around the mid-section, also argued that it is the first Bond movie ‘that attempts real change’ and this feels fun and fresh. The Sunday Times was also notably enthusiastic in its review: ‘No Time To Die is an exhilarating send-off that nobody will forget’ and it is ‘Mission accomplished, Mr. Craig’.
Welcome back, 007. It’s an all time high.
