No Time To Die to strain bladders with 163-minute running time
James Bond is a pretty prompt dude—as a guy who knows that you only live twice, but that tomorrow never dies (and that you can always just die another day), he’s never beat around the bush when it comes to pyrotechnic tardiness. And yet, despite news that he’s about to learn that he’s got No Time To Die—same, friend, same—it does sound like MI6's most murderous operative is finally learning to take it a little slower, with CNET reporting that his upcoming cinematic foray will be the longest James Bond movie to date.
Specifically, it’s being reported that Daniel Craig’s final Bond movie will clock in at a whopping 2 hours, 43 minutes, beating the next nearest contender, 2015's Spectre, by 15 minutes of taciturn, stunt-heavy action. To be fair, No Time To Die does have a lot on its plate, seeing as it’s got two villains to deal with—returning boxed crook Christoph Waltz, plus newcomer Rami Malek—and two 00s running around, with Lashana Lynch taking up the numeric mantle after James ducks out of the spy game for good. (But not really, of course.) Still, though, that’s a lot of sitting for what’s supposed to be a real edge-of-your-seat spectacle, pushing our collective interest in seeing a car ramp off of a thing that’s not really a ramp to limits previously only approached by the Fast And The Furious franchise. We can only hope Bond himself is equipped to deal with it; perhaps Ben Whishaw’s Q will pop in to give him the secret agent equivalent of the Stadium Pal, the better to get him through some of the longer stretches of exposition and Blofeld-heavy Anthony Hopkins riffs.
But, hey, if we only had Daniel Craig for one more Bond movie, we might try to make the most of it, too. Cary Fukunaga is directing the film, from a script by himself, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who was brought on at Craig’s personal request to punch up the script with a bit of that Killing Eve magic. No Time To Die lands in theaters on April 10 in the United States.