‘No Time to Die’: Daniel Craig’s Final James Bond Film Has New Release Date

No Time to Die, Daniel Craig‘s last James Bond movie, has been delayed again. The completed film is now scheduled to hit theaters on Oct. 8, 2021. It has been delayed several times due to the coronavirus pandemic, with its most recent date set for April 2, 2021, a year after United Artists and Universal Pictures first hoped to release it.

The James Bond producers confirmed the new date in a tweet on Thursday evening. It was not a surprising move, as many other studios have continued to push back release dates while the pandemic continues to rage around the world. In the U.S., many movie theaters are still closed across the country, where over 400,000 people have died due to complications of the coronavirus since the pandemic began.

No Time to Die is the 25th movie in the James Bond series and is set to be the last film starring Craig as 007. It is the first Bond movie directed by an American, as Beasts of No Nation director Cary Joji Fukunaga was hired to replace Danny Boyle during production. The cast includes Rami Malek as the new villain, Safin, and Ana de Armas as the new Bond girl, the CIA agent Paloma. Other members of the cast include Lashana Lynch, Lea Seydoux, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Wright, and Christoph Waltz. It was written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Fukunaga, and picks up after the events of Spectre in 2015.

The film has been delayed so much that Billie Eilish’s title song was released back on Feb. 13, 2020. The song has already topped the chart in the U.K. and hit No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The track was also nominated for the Grammy for Best Song Written for Visual Media.

Craig also promoted the movie by appearing on Saturday Night Live in March 2020, filming the last episode of Season 45 filmed in front of a live studio audience before the lockdown in New York City. No Time to Die had already been postponed for the first time when the episode aired. In his monologue, Craig talked about the movie in his monologue, mentioning the impact Waller-Bridge had on the script.

“Now, this next James Bond film is going to be my last, but it’s going to be one of the best because we got Phoebe Waller-Bridge from Fleabag to come and help with some of the dialogue,” Craig said. “It’s not going to be that different, but every so often I will turn to the camera and I will say, ‘The name’s Bond, James Bond. Is it bad that I fancy the Pope?’”