Daniel Craig Confirms He’s Finished With James Bond After No Time to Die

Daniel Craig is done playing James Bond. It’s something the 007 movie franchise has iterated a couple of times since taking on the Bond role in the 2006 film Casino Royale, but it seems as though this time he’s serious. It took Daniel Craig quite a while to sign on for the upcoming Bond 25 milestone, No Time to Die, and has suffered a grave injury while trying to bring that film to the big screen. Given his age (51), and the grueling demand of the James Bond movie franchise, it’s no surprise that now Craig is clearly and loudly marking his exit.

German site Express confirmed about Daniel Craig’s exit from James Bond during a recent interview with the actor. You can catch a translated snippet of that interview, below:

This should be no surprise to anyone who has been following the James Bond franchise for the last few years. Daniel Craig came back to film Sam Mendes’ Skyfall sequel Spectre, and ended up injuring his knee badly enough that production was halted. Craig’s return for No Time to Die became a winding saga of “Will he, won’t he?” for over a year after Spectre – and since he made the big deci$ion to actually come back, he was rewarded with an ankle injury that was bad enough to have required surgery, and another incident where a controlled explosion injured crew members. As stated, that’s a lot of on-set drama for an actor trying to hang with the action genre at 50+, so there should be no shame at all now that Craig wants to move on.

As you may well know, the discussion of who should play James Bond after Daniel Craig has already been raging for a year, before Craig even confirmed his Bond 25 return. That discussion goes from tapping another British hunk like Tom Hiddleston or Henry Cavill to take over Bond, to opening the role up to much greater diversity by having the likes of a woman or person of color take on the name. It’s been a… spirited discussion, to be sure, but not one that matters quite yet.

No Time to Die has now wrapped principal photography, under the direction of Cary Fukunaga (True Detective). Bond 25 was co-written by Fukunaga and Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Scott Z.Burns, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The film stars Craig, Lashana Lynch, de Armas (as “bubbly” Bond Girl Paloma), Rami Malek (as new Bond villain Safin), Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Lea Seydoux, and Billy Magnussen. The villainous Blofeld, played by Cristoph Waltz, is reportedly returning for this film in some capacity.

James Bond: No Time to Die is set to arrive in theaters on April 8, 2020.