Ana de Armas’ role in No Time To Die was originally even smaller than the final cut, the film’s writers have revealed.

• READ MORE: No Time To Die review: Daniel Craig’s surprisingly emotional final fling

Neal Purvis and Robert Wade recently told The Guardian that de Armas’ character, CIA agent Paloma, was “just a contact” at first.

“There’s no denying that what goes down very well with an audience is the whole Paloma sequence,” Purvis said of the scene in which de Armas joins Craig’s Bond for a shootout in Cuba.

“We had Paloma in our script, but she was just a contact,” the writer went on. “Cary [Joji Fukunaga, director] wanted more, so one assumes that’s an area that Phoebe [Waller-Bridge, co-writer] dealt with.”

In a four-star review of No Time To Die, NME wrote: “Craig and Seydoux’s relationship feels totally believable, their chemistry more intense than any Bond romance we’ve seen before. If you haven’t cried by the heart-wrenching finale, maybe you need another martini.”

Meanwhile, Daniel Craig recently shared his blunt advice for the next actor to play James Bond. 

“There’s a couple of things I’d say, but I mean, one is: don’t be shit,” Craig told Kevin Hart on the SiriusXM show Straight From The Hart.

“I would say you’ve got to grab it and make it your own. I think that’s the way to go forward,” he added.

Elsewhere, box office revenues for Cineworld have gone beyond pre-COVID levels thanks to films such as No Time To Die, Dune and Venom.

The chain, which is the second-largest in the world, reported big losses due to the pandemic in 2020, though re-opened back in May amid an easing of restrictions in the UK.