A little over a month ahead of No Time to Die‘s theatrical debut, we’re getting some keen insights into how the script for the 25th James Bond film (and Daniel Craig‘s final turn as 007) came together. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, perhaps best known for her writing and acting efforts on Fleabag and Killing Eve, recently opened up about her work on the No Time to Die script, including how she got involved with the help of Craig and what changes she made to it.
Speaking with UK newspaper The Independent, Waller-Bridge revealed her changes to the No Time to Die script. According to Waller-Bridge:
Image via Amazon Studios
“[I was asked to do] dialogue polishes and to offer things really. It’s about just offering different alternatives,” and continued with a deeper explanation, saying “they did give me some scenes and then be like, can you write some alternatives for this or have another idea about where it could go in the middle or how it would end. And then I would just give them options and various scenes and then they would take what they want. But there was a lot people writing — the director [Cary Fukunaga] was a writer on it as well. And there’d been a few writers before.”
Before the actor, writer, and producer came onto the scene, the No Time to Die script had first began in the hands of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade — the screenwriting duo who have worked on every Bond film since 1999’s The World Is Not Enough. The duo were brought in after screenwriter John Hodge‘s script was scrapped since it was dependent on an idea from Danny Boyle, who had been in talks to direct Bond 25 before Cary Joji Fukunaga was hired. Purvis and Wade worked with Fukunaga on the script, with additional tweaks and re-writes turned in by Paul Haggis, who had worked on Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale, and Scott Z. Burns in 2018 and 2019, respectively. It was around this time Waller-Bridge was brought on board, thanks to Craig’s recommendation, to help firm things up with the script.
Image via MGM
Waller-Bridge also told The Independent her own version of how she came to be involved with the No Time to Die script edits: “The strangest thing is, is that I’d really… I had been sort of dreaming about the idea of it only a few months beforehand. I was like, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be cool to be involved in a Bond film’ to sort of just put that there in the ether. And then it just came around,” and went on to touch on her connection to Craig through the whole process: “You know, Daniel [Craig] is really, really involved from the beginning. [I had] so many great conversations with him about it, constantly in touch with him about it. So it’s a big sort of melting pot of everybody’s ideas the whole time”
No Time to Die arrives in theaters on April 10. For more, check out our most anticipated movies of 2020, which includes — you guessed it — No Time to Die.
