No Time to Die director Cary Joji Fukunaga has addressed one popular fan theory about a Bond 25 character.
In an interview with SFX Magazine, Fukunaga dispelled rumors that Rami Malek's Safin in No Time to Die is a rebooted version of Dr. No, the original Bond baddie from the franchise's first movie back in 1962, insisting that Safin is, in fact, an all-new villain albeit one that he hopes will have an enduring impact in James Bond's extensive gallery of rogues.
"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," Fukunaga explained. "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."
Fukunaga recalled some of the early development meetings he had with Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson to create No Time to Die's villain and the challenges they faced in coming up with an entirely new antagonist, knowing there's a possibility that the character could end up being parodied and not taken seriously.
"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 admitted. "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!'"
It's worth noting that a number of fans correctly identified Christoph Waltz's "Franz Oberhauser" as Bond's archnemesis Ernest Stavro Blofeld in Spectre before that movie hit theaters in 2015, even though Waltz himself maintained that his character was "definitely not" Blofeld on the lead up to the movie's release.
Little is known about the mask-wearing Safin, other than the fact that he is a "mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology," who may be "007's most terrifying adversary yet." All will be revealed when No Time to Die finally hits theaters, with its theatrical release in the UK set for September 30, just ahead of its US release on October 8.
Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.