Anthony Horowitz Says That James Bond's Death In No Time To Die Is A Mistake

Daniel Craig’s 007 may have gone out with a literal bang in 2021’s No Time To Die, but James Bond author Anthony Horowitz has an issue with the movie’s controversial ending. Best known for his series of Alex Rider novels, Horowitz has also been commissioned by Ian Fleming’s estate to pen three official 007 novels, beginning with 2015’s Trigger Mortis.

During a recent interview with Radio Times about his new mystery show, Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue, Horowitz explained why he would never contemplate writing a screenplay for a new James Bond movie, despite having already written three official 007 books. Check out his comments below:

You need a thick skin for that business [of dealing with big-budget film producers]. I’m probably happier out of it.

Horowitz also went on to explain that the decision to kill Craig’s Bond in the final moments of No Time to Die was a mistake, and he would not know where to begin in terms of resurrecting the character for the franchise’s next installment. Check out his final comments below:

The last time we saw Bond he was poisoned and blown to smithereens – how will they get past the fact he is dead with a capital D? I think that was a mistake, because Bond is a legend. He belongs to everybody, he is eternal – except in that film.

If I was asked tomorrow to write the script, I wouldn’t be able to do it. Where would you start? You can’t have him waking up in the shower and saying it was all a dream.

While the James Bond movies have always had a loose approach to maintaining continuity between the character’s various incarnations, the decision to kill off Craig’s Bond at the end of his final movie still came as a surprise to many.

Even though established audiences are all expecting the next Bond movie to take place within a freshly rebooted continuity, some more casual viewers are still likely to experience a certain degree of confusion when Bond 26 introduces the next 007 to the world.

No matter how well Bond 26 director Denis Villeneuve and screenwriter Steven Knight work to establish their version of the character, the decision to kill off Bond for the first time in the franchise’s decades-long history will likely still have a lingering effect on how he is received moving forward.

Our Take On Moving On After Bond’s On-Screen Death

Daniel Craig as James Bond standing among a crowd in No Time to Die — Daniel Craig as James Bond in No Time to Die

Curiously, while Horowitz may not know how he would approach his own Bond 26 script, the author has already utilized the perfect device to cleanly separate the new Bond era from that of the recent Craig movies. Rather than placing his version of 007 in the modern world, Horowitz’s books take place in the same era as Fleming’s original tales.

With Knight already well known for writing historical fiction, there is probably no better screenwriter to tap into this same approach and deliver a Cold War Bond taken straight from Fleming’s original pages. By placing the new Bond back into his original setting, Bond 26 could easily delineate the character from the one who died in No Time To Die.

Source: Radio Times