No Time to Die: Rami Malek isn’t playing classic Bond villain

After several delays due to the pandemic, No Time to Die will finally hit theaters this October. Thanks to the delay, we’ve had plenty of time to theorize about what Daniel Craig’s last adventure as 007 will bring us. One of the more popular theories has to do with Safin, the movie’s main villain played by Rami Malek. Fans have speculated that Safin is actually Dr. No, the very first James Bond villain who was played by Joseph Wiseman in the 1962 film.

While speaking with SFX, No Time to Die director Cary Joji Fukunaga addressed the rumour that Rami Malek’s character is actually Dr. No.

Everyone thinks it’s so easy to make these tentpole films, that it’s just formulaic and you just plug-and-play and people are going to show up for the cinema. Actually, if you want a good film you have to take it seriously and put a lot of thought into it. It takes a lot of smart people to create these films, and also to create these characters that will hopefully last. This is a new villain. He’s not, as some have speculated, Dr. No. Hopefully he’ll be one that is lasting in some way.

As James Bond has gone up against plenty of villains in the past, some more memorable than others, crafting a truly unique adversary isn’t an easy job. “Making a villain that doesn’t seem laughable, that you can take seriously, where it’s still frightening what they’re attempting to do and why they must be stopped, is more difficult than people actually acknowledge,” Fukunaga said. “I remember us sitting around early in the development stage. Barbara and Michael have been doing this for decades and even Barbara admitted, ‘This is really hard!’” Here’s hoping that they’ve hit the right mark with Safin.

No Time to Die will continue on where Spectre left off, with James Bond having left active service to begin a new life with Dr. Swann (Léa Seydoux), but Bond is soon brought back into action when Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) comes calling to enlist his help in searching for a missing scientist. When it becomes apparent that the scientist was abducted, Bond must confront a danger the likes of which the world has never seen before in a villain (Rami Malek) armed with dangerous new technology. The film also stars Lashana Lynch, Ana de Armas, Christoph Waltz, Ben Whishaw, Naomi Harris, Rory Kinnear, and Ralph Fiennes, with Cary Joji Fukunaga directing from a script he co-wrote with Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. No Time to Die will now hit theaters (hopefully) on October 8, 2021.