Daniel Craig and the cast of the new James Bond film “No Time to Die” won’t be attending a planned premiere in Beijing, with a long-scheduled publicity tour of China cancelled due to the spread of the coronavirus.
The Sunday Times reports that the decision comes after 70,000 theatres throughout China have been closed down in an attempt to halt the spread of the virus. On Sunday, the death toll in China exceeded 1,600.
A premiere for “No Time to Die” was to have taken place in April, added the Times, but those plans have “now been scrapped.”
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Theatre closures in China, the world’s second-largest territory for box office earnings, are hitting Hollywood hard. While “No Time to Die”, Daniel Craig’s swan song as 007, was expected to be the highest-grossing Bond film to date, this now seems unlikely without revenue from China, where Bond films have traditionally been wildly popular.
“When you talk about a film making $1 billion worldwide, you don’t usually do it without a big chunk of that total coming from China,” Jeff Bock, senior analyst at entertainment research firm Exhibitor Relations, told the Times.
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According to estimates, since cinemas in China were shuttered on Jan. 24, box office earnings in the country have sunk to less than $4 million, compared to $1.3 billion during the same period last year.
“No Time to Die” opens on April 10.
