The next James Bond thriller, No Time to Die, has been delayed yet again as a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The 25th instalment of the spy franchise was originally scheduled to open in April 2020 but when cinemas shuttered, it was pushed back to November. With the box office still not back to normal, the film has been pushed to 2 April 2021. This weekend is currently occupied by Fast & Furious 9 which was also delayed from a 2020 release.

“We understand the delay will be disappointing to our fans but we now look forward to sharing No Time To Die next year,” a statement from MGM, Universal and the Bond producers, Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, read.

No Time to Die is set to be Daniel Craig’s last outing as 007 and will see him up against the Oscar-winner Rami Malek as the villain with returning cast members Naomie Harris, Léa Seydoux and Christoph Waltz.

The news follows other tentpole films also moving off their dates after disappointing returns for Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, which has reached over $280m internationally but only $41m in the US, where cinemas in the three main markets – New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco – remain shuttered.

A week after Tenet’s release, Warner chose to push Wonder Woman 1984 from October to Christmas (it was originally intended for a summer bow), an early sign of things to come. Soon after, Disney followed up with a long list of changes: Black Widow was pushed from its new November date to next summer with fellow Marvel adventures The Eternals and Shang-Chi also following, Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story was moved back an entire year to next Christmas and Kenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile was edged back by two months.

This week also saw Warner announce that Robert Zemeckis’s remake of The Witches, starring Anne Hathaway, would be premiering on HBO Max in the US, the latest of many digital bows for films originally intended for the big screen.