‘No Time To Die’ Shut Out From Best Picture Category, But Takes James Bond’s Oscar Noms Count To 18 Including Billie Eilish Best Song Nod

As the Oscars wrestle with grabbing a larger millennial audience, the dissing of tentpoles in the Best Picture category continues this year. In addition to AMPAS voters overlooking the sixth highest grossing movie ever at the global box office, Sony/Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home ($1.77 billion) for Best Picture, they also snubbed Daniel Craig’s swan song as James Bond in MGM/UAR/Eon’s No Time to Die in that slot as well.

To date, no 007 movie has been nominated for Best Picture, this despite a push this year for No Time to Die and the franchise’s highest grossing movie of all-time, which also starred Craig, 2012’s Skyfall ($1.1 billion).

No Time to Die was held for a theatrical release during the pandemic, repping one of the event titles to put global cinemas back in business after being shuttered for over a year. No Time to Die grossed over $774M at the global box office.

Still, the movie produced by Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson scored three Oscar noms in the categories of Sound, Visual Effects and for Billie Eilish and Finneas Baird O’Connell’s title theme song from the film. Overall, this takes the 007 franchise’s Oscar nom count to 18.

Previously, Bond films have won five Academy Awards, most recently in the original song slot for Sam Smith and Jimmy Napes’ tune “Writing’s on the Wall” from 2015’s Spectre and Adele and Paul Epworth’s “Skyfall” from the same 2012 movie. Other Bond Oscar wins include Norman Wanstall for Sound Effects (now Sound Editing) in Goldfinger (at the 37th Awards), John Stears for Special Visual Effects for Thunderball (at the 38th Awards) and Per Hallberg and Karen Baker Landers for Sound Editing for Skyfall. 

Skyfall is the most nominated Bond film to date with five nominations in Original Song, Original Score, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Cinematography.

Said Eilish and O’Connell this morning in a statement, “Words cannot describe how honored and excited we are to have been nominated for an Academy Award for our song ‘No Time To Die.’ It was a lifelong dream of ours to write a Bond theme, and one we never thought would ever come true. It’s completely unbelievable that we are here being recognized for this song, and this is a peak life experience for us as songwriters and artists. To be recognized today among these other incredible nominees is something we most certainly do not take for granted. Thank you to the Academy, from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you to Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson for allowing us this incredible opportunity, and to be part of Daniel Craig’s unparalleled legacy as James Bond. Thank you to Cary Joji Fukunaga, and last but not least, thank you to Hans Zimmer, Stephen Lipson and Johnny Marr for being an absolute joy to work with on this song.”

With No Time to Die, 007 receives his sixth original song nom at the Oscars.

Out of all the blockbusters that reaped Oscar recognition this AM, the only one was Warner Bros/Legendary’s Dune which has grossed close to $400M WW, and had a simultaneous release on HBO Max in the U.S. Dune received ten Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, but was overlooked for Denis Villeneuve’s directing, however, he shares an Adapted Screenplay nom of the Frank Herbert tome with Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth.