No Time to Die Producers Had to Convince Studio Execs to Kill James Bond

No Time to Die, the 25th film in the James Bond series, did the unthinkable by killing the iconic character. Daniel Craig's final 007 outing ended with Bond sacrificing himself to save everyone else, marking the first time in the franchise any iteration of the character died. The series will continue with a new actor in the role and a new direction for the story, but it's not lost on fans just how significant that ending was. The producers had to work to convince the studio to allow it.

Longtime Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson recently spoke to Empire about No Time to Die and addressed coming to the decision to kill off Craig's 007.

"When Daniel had had some rest, I said to him, 'that's not the end of the story. You can't go out like that,'" Broccoli said. "'It's a great starting place to see Bond in retirement and how would he deal with it? Let's think about that.' He agreed, and Michael and I started with the writers, coming up with where we would go. We were in that headspace."

"We had to convince the studio, of course," Wilson added with a laugh. "You can imagine their reaction!"

Broccoli went on to explain why that ending was really the best outcome for Craig's Bond, at least from a story perspective after his previous films.

"We thought, 'well, Bond now has what he's always been wanting, but afraid of, which is a family.' Because once you have a family, you're not just risking your own life, you're affecting the life of other people," said Broccoli. "That was always Bond's big nightmare to be across from a villain and for them to say, 'if you don't do what I want then I'm going to kill your loved ones.'"

"It was incredible at the No Time To Die premiere with 4,000 people and you could hear all the people, their breath and their heartbeats and they're going, 'this isn't happening...' And it happens," she added.

Now, the search will be on for the next Bond actor and a new direction for the entire franchise.