Robert Wade speaks at University of Chichester

Robert Wade, left, and Neal Purvis. (Paul Baack illustration)

Robert Wade, a seven-time James Bond film screenwriter with his partner Neal Purvis, spoke at the University of Chichester on Feb. 11.

The university, on the story portion of its Instagram account, provided a summary that didn’t include comments Wade made about No Time to Die.

Meanwhile, people who said they attended the talk took to Twitter.

First, some highlights from the official university summary.

— Wade said he and Purvis worked on Skyfall for a year but it wasn’t until two weeks before they had to submit a script that they came up with the idea of Bond kidnapping M.

— Director Sam Mendes “really leaned towards doing a London centric story.”

— On writing Bond films generally, Wade said he and Purvis “always start quite dark.”

Now, some comments from people who said they were at the presentation.

@TheTchaikovsky, author of the upcoming book Quantum of Silliness (part of the cover illustration is his Twitter avatar and the book’s Amazon.com entry references the Twitter feed), posted these tweets.

Robert’s seen a rough cut of #NoTimeToDie but he hasn’t heard Eilish’s song yet. I asked him in the Q&A if it was the rumoured three hours long and he said categorically no. pic.twitter.com/hdDKoKTtpn

— The Bubbles Tickle My Tchaikovsky (@TheTchaikovsky) February 11, 2020

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He talked briefly about their original #Bond25 script (before Danny Boyle came along)… the words he used were ‘brave’ and ‘pretty experimental’. It’s unclear how much of that original scrip survives, but Fukunaga has brought in his own ideas as a credited writer.

Report ends. pic.twitter.com/z5wAFAOVae

— The Bubbles Tickle My Tchaikovsky (@TheTchaikovsky) February 11, 2020

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Purvis and Wade were hired to write No Time to Die in 2017. Director Danny Boyle pitched an idea by himself and writer John Hodge, which was reported in 2018.

The film was announced in May 2018 as being written by Hodge and directed by Boyle. But Boyle departed in August 2018 and Hodge left with him. Cary Fukunaga was brought in after that.

The Purvis and Wade team, Fukunaga, Scott Z. Burns and Phoebe Waller-Bridge have all been involved in writing No Time to Die. A press release issued in December listed all but Burns, according to a story by the MI6 James Bond website.

The final writing credit will be determined by the Writers Guild of America.

Newest NTTD ad teases a few more clues

The spoiler adverse should just leave now.

A new No Time to Die ad was shown on the E! channel’s pre-Oscars show on Sunday, Feb. 9. It was similar to the 30-second spot that aired a week earlier during the Super Bowl. But there were a few new bits:

— James Bond (Daniel Craig) and Madeline Swann (Lea Seydoux), both looking a bit haggard, say, “This is it,” to each other.

–Bond holds a burning piece of paper that reads, “Forgive me.” From Madeline Swann? Or possibly an old note from Vesper Lynd that he’s kept for all these years?

–A tense M (Ralph Fiennes) says, “Come on Bond.”

–Safin (Rami Malek) says he had made Bond “redundant.” Bond replies, “Not as long as there are people like you in the world.”

Also, of note, both the Feb. 2 and Feb. 9 ads only had a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer logo.

The first trailer, which debuted in December, had MGM and Universal logos. United Artists Releasing, a joint venture of MGM and Annapurna, is releasing No Time to Die in the U.S. Universal is handling international distribution.

If you haven’t seen it, you can view the commercial below.