Would Danny Boyle’s “James Bond” Be a Better Film Than “No Time to Die?”

Although Mr. Boyle has an Academy Award for directing, he’d never come near to tackling anything comparable to the James Bond franchise, which was part of his appeal as a potential director for the landmark 25th installment in the long-running spy series.

However, creative squabbles ended up surfacing in the end to see Boyle leave the director’s chair not long before principal photography was scheduled to begin. Cary Joji Fukunaga stepped in to direct one of the highest-grossing movies of the pandemic, which became a beloved and fitting finale for Daniel Craig’s tenure beneath the tux, so things turned out fine in the end.

However, recent comments by Boyle suggest that his adaptation of the tale will take a different approach to the established 007 mythology.

“Weirdly — it would have been very topical now — it was all set in Russia, which is of course where Bond came from, out of the Cold War. It was set in present-day Russia and went back to his origins, and they just lost, what’s the word… they just lost confidence in it. It was a shame really.”

Following his comments, fans have been debating if and whether the Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire director would have been able to surpass what audiences wound up receiving in No Time to Die.

It’s clear that Craig’s last film as cinema’s most famous secret agent is a strong blockbuster that brings his five-movie arc to a convincing conclusion, but it’s also reasonable to assume that a more distinctive actor like Boyle would have produced a James Bond experience unlike anything we’d seen before.