Film

Coronavirus Claims James Bond: New Movie Delayed Months Thanks To Virus, And Fans Are Pissed

James Bond's got the coronavirus.

by Joseph Earp  5 March 2020
Coronavirus and James Bond

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James Bond has been laid low by the coronavirus. Sort of.

No Time To Die, the new Bond outing, was due to release in cinemas a little over a month away, in April. The hotly-anticipated film is presumably Daniel Craig’s last outing as the world-famous super spy, and had thus generated a huge amount of excitement — excitement now quelled by the coronavirus.

Yep, worried that the coronavirus will have people self-isolating in their homes rather than going out to the cinemas, MGM have delayed the release of the Bond film some six months, till November. Now, the film will come out Thanksgiving weekend, around November 25.

It’s a bold assumption that the coronavirus and the media furore around it will have died down by then. But MGM are clearly trying to play it safe — much to the chagrin of dyed-in-the-wool Bond fans, who are taking it all predictably and understandably badly.

There are even rumours that No Time To Die features a weaponised virus as its main plot point. If that’s true, it’s kind of a no-brainer for MGM to move the release date — not exactly escapist entertainment to sit in a theatre and watch a villain release a new plague unto the Earth.

Anyway, at least this whole mess has spawned a new glut of Bond/coronavirus memes, surely not a sentence that I ever would have imagined writing some three or four months ago.

Just goes to show: even if poison-tipped blades, gun tubes under tables, and dangerous octopi can’t kill James Bond, then perhaps the novel coronavirus can.