new Bond movie - 'No Time to Die' spends lakhs on Cocoa cola !!

Five years after the capture of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, James Bond has left active service. He is approached by Felix Leiter, his friend and a CIA officer, who enlists his help in the search for Valdo Obruchev, a missing scientist. When it becomes apparent that Obruchev was abducted, Bond must confront a villain whose schemes could see the deaths of millions.  .. .. that reportedly is the plot of the new Bond movie ‘No time to Die’.

Interestingly, the new movie  will not feature the spy in its pre-credits action for the first time in nearly 50 years. Whether he is walking through the streets of Mexico's Day of the Dead festival or involved in an epic car chase, nearly every Bond film has previously featured 007 in action before the credits roll. But No Time To Die will break with that time-honoured tradition by not featuring Bond in the opening scenes for the first time since 1973's Live And Let Die.  Instead, it will begin with a scene performed entirely in French featuring Madeleine Swann, the woman for whom Bond retires at the end of Spectre played by Lea Seydoux.

Be it Pandemic or normal times, perhaps the beverage industry sells more than any other industry does ! Inside Shopping malls, departmental stores and even your neighbourhood friendly shops – you find breathtaking array of soft drinks.  From the days when you had Fanta, Campacola and Goldspot backed up by Kali Mark,  Bovonto and Mapillai Vinayakar in interior places, the industry has come a long way.   Have heard of  too many brands over the years  of :  Cocoa Cola, Limca, 7 Up, LMN, Slice, Maaza, Mountain dew, Slice, Sprite, Mirinda, Thumsup, Pepsi – to name a few.   The soft drink industry has been  growing at a hectic pace and Coke & Pepsi have a lion’s share of the market.  The big players have ensured that their small competitors were strangled and extinguished out of the market .. .. and this is about revenue earned in a strange manner !!  

No Time to Die is a forthcoming spy film and the twenty-fifth instalment in the James Bond film series produced by Eon Productions. The film features Daniel Craig in his fifth and final outing as the fictional British MI6 agent James Bond. The film is directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga from a screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Fukunaga, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge.  Development began in 2016. No Time to Die will be the first Bond film distributed by Universal Pictures, which acquired the international distribution rights following the expiration of Sony Pictures' contract after the release of Spectre in 2015. The final title was announced in August 2019. No Time to Die was scheduled for release in April 2020, but was postponed worldwide twice due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is now scheduled for release on 2 April 2021. 

Everyone knows how partial James Bond is to a vodka martini, shaken but not stirred. However, the making of the latest 007 film involved vast quantities of a rather different drink – Coca-Cola. The producers of No Time To Die paid £55,000 (approx. Rs.51.20 lakhs) for 8,400 gallons of Coke – not for the crew to drink but  to make cobbled streets at one filming location less slippery for a motorcycle stunt.   According to stunt boss Lee Morrison, Daniel Craig devised the trick allowing his stunt double rider Paul Edwards to hit a 25ft ramp at 60mph, clear a wall and land on cobbles.  Crew members spent hours splashing it around Matera in southern Italy ahead of a spectacular bike jump over a 60ft wall.

The plan was to let the drink dry, leaving a sticky residue that would help the 450cc bike grip the cobbles better when it landed. For the spectacle, stunt rider Paul Edwards had to hit a 25ft ramp at 60mph to clear the wall and land on the cobbles. Stunt boss Lee Morrison said star Daniel Craig had come up with the idea and told him about it in a late-night phone call, adding: 'I spent nearly €60,000 spraying Coca-Cola around Matera. I've been spraying Coca-Cola on slippery surfaces for a very long time.' He told Total Film magazine that the drink also 'makes things look very clean after it washes off'.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that, unusually, Bond will not appear in the action sequence that traditionally precedes the title credits.  In previous opening sequences, the spy has skied off the edge of a mountain before pulling open a Union Jack parachute (The Spy Who Loved Me), made a 750ft bungee jump off a Swiss dam (GoldenEye) and fought a fleeing mercenary on the roof of a speeding train (Skyfall). The Wall Street Journal described the opening scene of No Time To Die as 'visually arresting... and entirely Bond-free'. Bond expert Piers Bracher said the films used 'a fixed recipe', adding: 'It is a predictable formula. That's why we all like it – or hate it – so much.' No Time To Die is said to be Craig's final outing as 007.  

Interesting ! 

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

18.10.2020.