No Time To Die Director Had to Film Scenes Without Knowing What They Were About

No Time To Die is finally hitting theaters next week and it will mark the fifth and final Bond film to star Daniel Craig. It will also be the first of the franchise helmed by Cary Joji Fukunaga (Beasts of No Nation, Maniac). The movie is one of many that's had multiple delays due to the pandemic, and it appears things behind the scenes were also a little hectic. We already knew the film brought in Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag, Killing Eve) to add humor to the script, but according to a new interview with Fukunaga, the script wasn't complete by the time he began dilming.

"With Bond, we were still writing when we'd wrapped," the director told Esquire Middle East. "I was even writing in post!" Fukunaga explained that he was forced to direct scenes without knowing how they would fit into the plot due to an on-set injury sustained by Craig. After the star hurt his ankle, the production was forced to continue without him for a bit, so Fukunaga had to switch to filming scenes that hadn't been written. 

"The only set which was really ready to go was M's office in MI6," Fukunaga shared. "I knew more or less in the outline that I made what I wanted to have happen in that section, but none of the body of the script had been written yet. Luckily, I was sitting there with some of the greatest actors in the world."

"I was writing dialogue that was intentional enough, but vague enough, that I could apply it to a number of different things happening in the third act. It was almost like a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' novel writing these pages: 'If this happened here, and you have to go here, then this page will work for that,'" Fukunaga said of a scene featuring Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, and Rory Kinnear. He added, "When we finally put the film together, it all made sense, somehow all fit together. But I'll tell you a secret, that I think is okay now that we're so close to release, there are pieces that Ralph Fiennes says in the trailer that neither Ralph nor I knew exactly what he was saying it for."

You can read the official synopsis here: "In NO TIME TO DIE, Bond has left active service and is enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica. His peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help. The mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist turns out to be far more treacherous than expected, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology."

No Time to Die will be released in theaters on October 8th.