In a year that has seen more spectacle than some decades…
At a time when we all can do with some witty entertainment – while times are neither witty nor entertaining…
Commanderbond.net is proud to announce its third e-book ‘The 007th Minute: No Time to Die’ by Jacques Stewart, also containing ‘Casino Royale Vol. 1 – The Tarantino / Brosnan version’.
As with the first two CBn ebooks ‘The 007th Minute’ and ‘The 007th Chapter’, Heiko Baumann again provided cover design, illustrations and typesetting of the tome.
It can be downloaded for free here. If you want to give something in return please consider to donate a sum to UNICEF.
Aren’t you a little early, Mr Bond? Had we expected you so soon the ’69 Bollinger would be on ice by now…
Alas, we simply didn’t know when to expect you. We kept on being told you were on your way in April 2020. Then it was teatime November 2020, then dinner April 2021, and it was only half an hour ago we heard you would only be here in time for a double premiere on September 28, – in London and Zurich for the Zurich Film Festival.
On January 22nd 2021, Eon Productions Ltd. announced that the premiere of the 25th James Bond movie NO TIME TO DIE would once again be postponed due to the global Corona pandemic. The new date for the premiere is now October 8th 2021. This is CBn’s take on it:
No time for No Time to Die
Alternate lyrics written by the team of Commanderbond.net
We should have known It would be postponed. Just goes to show That the things don’t always Go the way we hope.
We were aware: A pandemic isn’t fair. We’ll have to bear Another few months for This movie to premiere
Were we stupid to believe That we’d see it this spring? Oh, this virus is just one horrid thing.
Hope the franchise will survive, Hope we all will stay alive. Pushed back once, twice and thrice, All this waiting isn’t nice. But before this has gone by: No time for No Time To Die.
Just let it burn, It should be our least concern. These are lessons that we’ve learned: That James Bond will … return.
That tomorrow never dies, That we all only live twice. Live and let live, not live and let die, We’ll be there when it arrives. But in these pandemic times: No time for No Time To Die.
No time for No Time To Die No time for No Time To Die
Push again, once or twice, It may help to save some lives.
First this has to pass, and then We’ll see No Time To Die.
Deadline Hollywood (what an apt name…) just reports that NO TIME TO DIE will be delayed to the Easter weekend 2021 – for now, that is. Fans are of course extremely miffed, to say the least. But everybody with an even distant relationship to the concept of ‘reality’ will at least have had cautious reservations about this November release date anyway.
Be that as it may, for now we’re looking at Easter 2021 as the new release date for NO TIME TO DIE. Stay tuned and stay healthy…
To borrow fellow CBner Jim’s phrase, some light entertainment finds itself rescheduled. Bummer. This week the premiere of NO TIME TO DIE was moved to 12. November (UK) and 25. November (US) respectively. 2020, in case you wondered.
The Interweb immediately reported a combined heart-quake of 16.99 on the Bond fan scale. Fans wept. Fans ranted. Fans threatened to slash their wrists. Some even did it on camera and posted it to the channels of their vast media empires, freely admitting they may be hapless know-nothings but insisting to prove it for 20 minutes so even the last doubts quietly left by their backdoor. Oh well…
Did this come unexpected? Not exactly. Everybody who hasn’t been living under a stone in a deep deep well in an abandoned old ruin on the wrong side of the Borgo Pass, or at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, must have had at least a wee tiny little inkling that things were going on. Or make that things, sounds more ominous. Befitting a situation were surgical masks are suddenly harder currency than the dollar.
So in all fairness, one could have paused for a moment when China closed off Wuhan region. One might have hesitated when one heard about lockdowns in Italy, quarantines in Japan and cases popping up wherever authorities started to look. And one must have been aware of nasty things afoot once there was a COBRA meeting – that’s COBRA!!! for the initiated – scheduled 72 hours in advance. Now that’s a sure sign of perilous machinations; Britons only unpack their COBRA!!! gear when it absolutely cannot wait longer than a weekend.
So the shockwave that rippled the Interweb right after 007.com announced the decision to delay this premiere was curiously at once genuine surprise – How dare reality interfere with my – MY! – Bond film? I’ve got a Europe trip booked here! A Midori bursting at the seams with travel vouchers and lounge passes! Is Tyler Brûlé aware of this? Does he approve??? – and yet it fell into a conspicuously quiet atmosphere where Bond fans apparently had started to hold their breath for a few days already. Bond may be a fantasy pastime but most fans are still dimly aware there’s such a thing as a market. And that it’s unlikely NO TIME TO DIE can be that huge success hoped for in a market significantly cut to size. And this is just the reality of it, the part that’s measured in currency: with the outbreak of Covid-19 there’s simply no way a blockbuster can live up to its potential.
That aside there are the obvious health considerations. And the ethical ones, should your own health just not be all that important to you. Bond fans are famous for braving oceans, hazards and disease with aplomb, and their hands do not falter when disbursing cheeky sums. But they cough and sneeze and mop their beaks like ordinary mortals and their grannies want to celebrate a few more birthdays like everybody else.
So what can we take home from this series of unfortunate events? Apart from washing our hands. Properly. With soap. I’m looking at you, Pilatus; one more time!
Well, we know now how Fido must feel when we tease him with a Frankfurter. This is cruel and one should not do it. On the other hand…
The film is already there, shot and edited and marketed and ready to eat. View. Unlike the Frankfurter it’s not going to rot – not that Fido would mind a rotten Frankfurter; Fido would fight a Rottweiler about a rotten Frankfurter any rotten day. Rot my words. Whatever this film’s qualities may be, they are not going to change between now and November. Nothing is really lost, NO TIME TO DIE is simply waiting a little stretch down the river. We’ll arrive at its secrets in no time at all, hopefully all well and in good health.
And should some nasty creature have ideas about reaching up to that shelf where NO TIME TO DIE waits now, with intentions of spoiling it…it better be somebody who is not going to be missed. Because that shelf is inside a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.
MGM, Universal and Bond producers, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, announced today that after careful consideration and thorough evaluation of the global theatrical marketplace, the release of NO TIME TO DIE will be postponed until November 2020. pic.twitter.com/a9h1RP5OKd
Another brief NO TIME TO DIE feature – call it an invitation – was published on YouTube. Listen to Cary Fukunaga’s 100 seconds pitch while brief glimpses of the action whet the appetite for the main course…