NO TIME TO DIE WEEKEND THREAD | Bond 56M, Venom 32M

[grim22]

From Matt Belloni

 

Quote

does that mean No Time to Die will end up profitable? Probably not, actually. At least not during its theatrical window. I spent some time this week talking to film finance and exhibition experts about the challenges these days of pushing super-expensive tentpoles into the black. It wasn’t easy before, but now? Even in a best-case scenario, No Time to Die likely won’t get there. Let’s do some quick math.

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MGM is admitting a $250 million production cost on the film, though my sources say it’s closer to $280 million. Let’s split the difference and agree on $265 million, which would likely make it the most expensive Bond movie ever. (The five Craig pictures got increasingly more expensive, say sources, because his fee kept rising, 2012’s Skyfall showed that a Bond film could gross $1 billion, and the Broccolis upped the production values and cast name-brand villains like Javier Bardem, Christoph Waltz, and now Rami Malek, hot off his Oscar.)

MGM, which pays for global prints and advertising, is also admitting the P&A spend on No Time to Die is above the $153 million for Skyfall. (That number was revealed in the Sony hack.) So let’s generously say $160 million to market and release, though I suspect even ordinary inflation would take that number higher.

 

Then let’s add in an additional $40 million or so in what I’ll call “zombie marketing,” the money spent supporting the three aborted releases, in April and November of 2020 and in April of 2021. That figure is coming from a source close to the production, though it’s not exact, and MGM declined to confirm it and has not included these costs in its earnings reports. I use the zombie analogy because it was money spent on a “dead” release but it wasn’t totally dead; it was just waiting to come back to life. Those millions surely raised awareness of the film, which will likely pay dividends now, though it’s unclear how much it all helped. Theatrical campaigns don’t typically start and stop over a two-year period. This is all unprecedented territory.

What stayed consistent is the marketing blitz for No Time. MGM says all 17 partners that originally signed on—from Omega watches to Smirnoff vodka—have continued their deals to plug the film in lavish campaigns worth a total of $150 million. Heineken even used the down time to re-shoot an updated TV spot with Craig called “Worth the Wait” (though I happen to believe it’s a shocking betrayal of the character for Mr. Martini to drink such a watered-down beverage). Universal, a first-time Bond distributor—remember, Megan Ellison’s Annapurna was originally on board but ran into money problems, requiring a bailout from dad Larry—is also bringing some of Comcast’s “symphony” promotion on its various platforms to the effort overseas. In short, this movie is getting an A-level, global marketing push befitting a pre-pandemic Bond release.

But will it deliver A-level box office? It needs to. Adding up those expenses gets to nearly $500 million in sunk-in costs to release the film. And that’s not including the expense associated with it sitting on a shelf for a year and a half. If the cost of money is generally 4 percent or 5 percent, that’s more cash not used on other things.
 

 

In fact, I’m less interested in whether No Time to Die turns a profit—after all, what is money to MGM’s likely new owner Amazon?—and more concerned with how its performance will impact future movies. There’s a good chance that Covid will linger as a concern for years to come, and streaming is already altering the value proposition of movies. If we are indeed entering a new normal of less big-budget moviegoing, the budgets on these A-level tentpoles will likely need to come down. Already, I’ve heard rumblings that the next Bond movie will almost certainly be cheaper, in part because it will introduce a new star but also because spending nearly $300 million on a movie doesn’t make much sense if you can’t guarantee something close to a billion-dollar theatrical gross. Even if it’s Amazon’s money. If anything, that may be the legacy of No Time to Die. We waited a long time for this, so despite that dickish producer’s spoiler, tomorrow let’s enjoy what a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar spy movie looks like, because we may never see another one.    

[Jamiem]

11 minutes ago, grim22 said:

We waited a long time for this, so despite that dickish producer’s spoiler, tomorrow let’s enjoy what a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar spy movie looks like, because we may never see another one.    

Surely the next 2 MI films have a budget around that mark, but even if not as I've said before it would be a mistake for the studios to drastically cut budgets as TV budgets go up significantly at the same time. The visual feast is part of what makes blockbusters appealing to such a wide range of people also known as the general audience, if they lose that special feeling that could hurt the Box Office long term. 

Edited October 8, 2021 by Jamiem

[BestPicturePlutoNash]

Aren't the Mission Impossible movies as expensive, too?

[charlie Jatinder]

NTTD will earn $300M+ from theatrical return, throw in $150M+ from TV/SVOD. There's then Home Media revenue. It will be fine.

[filmlover]

FWIW I wasn't feeling this opening to the same levels as Skyfall even when it was supposed to come 18 months ago before the world fell apart even with the "Craig's Last Ride" factor. The fact he will have headlined 5 of the 6 biggest Bond openings ever seems like a strong enough achievement on its own.

[grim22]

7 minutes ago, filmlover said:

FWIW I wasn't feeling this opening to the same levels as Skyfall even when it was supposed to come 18 months ago before the world fell apart even with the "Craig's Last Ride" factor. The fact he will have headlined 5 of the 6 biggest Bond openings ever seems like a strong enough achievement on its own.

I mean opening weekends really started skyrocketing around 2001-2002, so it would be more shocking if he didn't headline big openings.

 

In 2007, as part of my MBA project, I had actually created a regression model for Bond movie openings taking past openings, reviews, word of mouth and so on into account. Had ended up predicting the QoS opening weekend to within 1M. Everyone else in class had done like stocks and commodity prices and stuff, so my topic kind of stood out.

 

Makes me a bit sad thinking about that because I used A LOT of data from BOM which isn't there anymore.

[filmlover]

21 minutes ago, grim22 said:

I mean opening weekends really started skyrocketing around 2001-2002, so it would be more shocking if he didn't headline big openings.

The openings for a lot of these movies do go up a lot if you adjust for inflation. All the Brosnan movies adjust to openings between $55M and $70M+ circa 2021. Been a consistent franchise in terms of attendance after it was revived from a 6 year dormancy.

[Blankments]

I do feel like oddly enough the hype feels more tangible in the past few months than it did in February and March of 2020. TBH didn't really feel like it was being sold as Craig's last Bond movie to me until the campaign for the current date

[Darth Lehnsherr]

1 hour ago, Jamiem said:

Surely the next 2 MI films have a budget around that mark, but even if not as I've said before it would be a mistake for the studios to drastically cut budgets as TV budgets go up significantly at the same time. The visual feast is part of what makes blockbusters appealing to such a wide range of people also known as the general audience, if they lose that special feeling that could hurt the Box Office long term. 

With the COVID-19 delays I can imagine MI7 being well in excess of $200M for the budget 

[Cap]

3 hours ago, Inceptionzq said:

Honestly I’m glad I get to see the trailer more. 

Seriously, I don’t know I’ll actually go see the movie, but the trailer in IMAX is awesome.

I pulled this over here to not clog up the tracking thread, but

 

I just got out of no time to die and I’m ask. The two trailers that we got were Top Gun Maverick and Dune.
 

GGGGGGUUUUUUUUUUH. The fight Ariel stunts in maverick are insane. God damn. And dune finally looks like a giant space opera. Yeah. I literally have no idea how you kill theatrical distribution. I went from 0 to 180 real quick watching the trailers on IMAX. They’re both gonna get my money. And I didn’t think they were before.

[Eric Atreides]

Just now, Cap said:

I pulled this over here to not clog up the tracking thread, but

 

I just got out of no time to die and I’m ask. The two trailers that we got were Top Gun Maverick and Dune.
 

GGGGGGUUUUUUUUUUH. The fight Ariel stunts in maverick are insane. God damn. And dune finally looks like a giant space opera. Yeah. I literally have no idea how you kill theatrical distribution. I went from 0 to 180 real quick watching the trailers on IMAX. They’re both gonna get my money. And I didn’t think they were before.

...what do you mean you weren't gonna watch Dune?

[keysersoze123]

Definitely trend for this movie over past 3 days has been disastrous. But its what it is. Overall with strong run in parts of Europe and it will gross something in almost all regions it should do OK WW. I am not sure about it beat Fast 9 at this point. Let us wait for this weekend BO not just domestic but also 2nd weekend holds in Europe. 

[Cap]

4 minutes ago, Eric Safin said:

...what do you mean you weren't gonna watch Dune?

No I was going to watch it.

 

Spoiler

On 1.5x on HBOMax

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Cap]

Anyway, big mood:

 

 

 

 

[Cmasterclay]

I still think Bond will do more than fine over the weekend, personally, but maybe I'm eating at the chumpateria. It's a 3 hour long adult movie on a work night for a franchise that doesn't do well in previews anyway. I can easily see a flat Saturday and a great Sunday drop with the holiday.

[Inceptionzq]

20 minutes ago, Cap said:

I pulled this over here to not clog up the tracking thread, but

 

I just got out of no time to die and I’m ask. The two trailers that we got were Top Gun Maverick and Dune.
 

GGGGGGUUUUUUUUUUH. The fight Ariel stunts in maverick are insane. God damn. And dune finally looks like a giant space opera. Yeah. I literally have no idea how you kill theatrical distribution. I went from 0 to 180 real quick watching the trailers on IMAX. They’re both gonna get my money. And I didn’t think they were before.

Oh yeah that Dune trailer in IMAX is amazing. I was already sold on it, but I had to change my seat when I saw Venom on Tuesday. The acoustics in the back of the IMAX theater are so much better than where I normally sit.

[Legion Again]

1.2

5.8

18

22

16

 

63

 

[filmlover]

I'm mostly just curious what the demographic breakdown will be. Spectre's opening weekend audience was 35% over 50 (the demographic that's arguably been the most reluctant about returning to theaters since they reopened) and this is the closest thing to a full-blown event movie for that crowd released in the pandemic so far so we're about to find out if that demo really just isn't coming back in massive numbers for anything still (which would be bad news for all the other movies aimed mainly at the demo coming out in the next few months).

[Legion Again]

Olds will only come out for spider-man this year 👀

[Legion Again]

11 minutes ago, Let There Be Legion said:

Olds will only come out for spider-man this year 👀

Not joking btw, serious.