Former James Bond actor George Lazenby was among the first filmgoers to see No Time to Die, the 25th installment of the long-running franchise. Lazenby, who starred as Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1969, recently caught an early screening of No Time to Die at a theater in Los Angeles. Posting a photo of himself next to a promo of the movie featuring Daniel Craig, Lazenby revealed that he’d seen No Time to Die and seemed to especially enjoy the music.
Since it wasn’t feasible for me to be in London for the World premiere I got to see the new Bond here in LA. Interesting choices of music I must say 😊 @007pic.twitter.com/JVx2z5ST4G
— George Lazenby (@lazenbyofficial) September 28, 2021
“Since it wasn’t feasible for me to be in London for the World premiere I got to see the new Bond here in LA. Interesting choices of music I must say,” Lazenby says in the tweet. He might be referring to an homage to John Barry’s work on On Her Majesty’s Secret Service that Hanz Zimmer worked into the score for No Time to Die.
There are five actors who’ve played James Bond on the big screen over the years. George Lazenby had the especially challenging task of following Sean Connery, the original Bond. After Connery had starred as 007 in five movies, Lazenby took over the role for 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which also starred Dame Diana Riggs of Avengers and Game of Thrones fame. Lazenby’s time as Bond was one and done, as Connery slipped back into the tuxedo for the followup movie, Diamonds Are Forever, in 1971.
A Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan later, James Bond is these days played by Daniel Craig. No Time to Die is the fifth movie to be released starring Craig in the lead role, and it will serve as his final performance. He initially said he would be finished with the role after Spectre, but has since clarified that he wanted to do No Time to Die to give his version of James Bond a more proper sendoff.
“I didn’t think that I was going to do another movie after Spectre. I genuinely thought that I was going to … just pack it in,” Craig recently told Reuters. “But I’m so happy that I got the chance to come and do this one. And we tied up lots of loose ends. We’ve tried to tell one story with all my Bond movies. It’s like they’re all connected in some way and this one just sort of capped it off.”
Also the longest James Bond movie with a runtime of nearly three hours, No Time to Die is directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga using a script co-written with Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Along with Daniel Craig, the movie stars Rami Malek, L&éa Seydoux, Lashana Lynch, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz, and Ralph Fiennes.
The world premiere of No Time to Die was held at Royal Albert Hall on the 28th of September, followed by an international release on the 30th. Meanwhile, No Time to Die will premiere in U.S. theaters on Oct. 8. This all follows several major release date delays due to the pandemic. While the role of James Bond will be recast after this movie, with talks reportedly set to start in 2022, the plan moving forward is to keep all James Bond moviesexclusive to theaters.