No Time to Die was one of the first major film releases to push itself back on the calendar, even before it was clear in the U.S. that theaters would need to close. The movie was pushed back from an April release to November. Many filmmakers would love to be given several extra months before a movie is released. There's an opportunity to complete work that maybe wasn't quite done the way one wanted or to come up with entirely new ideas that might improve things in the edit. However, Cary Fukunaga isn't doing much of anything with No Time to Die.
When asked by Empire about taking the extra time available to do extra work on No Time to Die, Cary Fukunaga says that he reached a point mentally where he was done with the movie and so he's not looking to dive back in. According to the director...
You could just fiddle and tweak and it doesn’t necessarily get better. For all intents and purposes, we had finished the film. I had mentally finished the film. Mentally and emotionally.
The complete process of making movie can take all of one's attention for well over a year, especially when you're talking about films like James Bond movies. After having No Time to Die be such a major part of Cary Fukunaga's life, he reached a point where the work was done, and so the idea of not being done simply doesn't appeal to him. He got the movie to a point he was willing to walk away, and he did.
And the director also says that just because he could keep messing with the movie, it doesn't mean that the result would actually be a better film. Maybe in some cases, you could make a particular sequence a little tighter or more engaging, but you're just as likely to make something else not work as well, or make changes that have no ultimate impact on the project, just spinning your wheels for the sake of keeping busy.
Odds are if there really was something Cary Fukunaga wasn't happy with, he would go ahead and take the time to fix it. He probably wouldn't be so mentally done with it if there was something about it he felt needed fixing. We can be fairly confident then that the movie at least meets with his approval, and thus, it's probably in pretty good shape.
No Time to Die will be the final outing as James Bond for Daniel Craig, and so many fans are probably really expecting something special. If the movie will live up to the hype is anybody's guess, though at this point, it seems that nobody is worrying too much about that part. The movie is ready, and all that's left is for the world to see it. That will happen, barring future delays, in November.
