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But back to NTTD: when do you guys think they can announce another delay the latest? in other words, when can I relax and allow myself to get excited about the release?
I'm in the same boat. The wait is agonizing. The article on MI6HQ said they can announce it somewhere close to 1 month out. In my mind this seems far too late, but the delay from November-April 2021 was announces a little over 1 month out and they had already wasted money on a second trailer and marketing campaign. Obviously that was under much different circumstances than much of the world is in now.
Like others have said, another delay now might be for pure financial reasons, which I think are ridiculous given the terrible PR that would generate, loss of interest amongst general audiences, financial blows to cinema chains, and the likelihood that the massive box office returns they seem to want are unlikely for at least 1-2 more years.
-The overall thrust of the argument about costs of both making and delaying the film feels right, but the idea that it has to gross $950 million to be profitable feels off. For instance, SF spent something like $100 million on promotions; would NTTD really spend 50% more? As important, their back-of-napkin math includes production costs and promotion costs, which seems about right, but leaves out the revenue baked in from product placement deals. SP had allegedly made ~$75 million in sponsorship deals before the cameras started rolling. Surely NTTD will be looking at a similar amount, and that's decent money - about a quarter (or more?) of the production cost.
All a long way of saying that this number is probably quite nuanced.
-I agree that perhaps the most interesting question is whether big box office ever comes back. It's easy to imagine a future that looks a bit more Netflix-y - smaller films, shot in interesting but cheaper locations, bolstered with a few 'big' names and increasingly effective CGI. I might be willing to wager a fiver that NTTD will have the biggest budget for a Bond film in my lifetime. How long will it take for people to want to pack out cinemas in big numbers again, and for studios to want to risk $300 million on it?
-Music has already seen this shift. The 'blockbuster' era is largely over, and instead popular music has fractured into subgenres. Now with the advent of things like ProTools, even modestly talented people can produce quite professional-sounding music at home, and can release it for free on YouTube. Is this what comes next for film? What would it look like? Will we one day look back on the "blockbuster era" like the 'silent era' or the 'spaghetti western' or blacksploitation' eras? A quirky time now long past?
-Finally, as mentioned, the pending Amazon sale seems curious in the mix. Didn't negotiations start during the pandemic? I'm of course mostly concerned that the franchise earns enough to stay in good shape and roll ahead with Bond 26; presumably the very unsentimental lawyers and accountants at Amazon will have priced in a potentially poor performance for NTTD into their figures? In other words, whereas before the Amazon sale I was concerned that taking a major loss on NTTD could be catastrophic for the franchise (or at least EON and MGM) perhaps now that's less the case?
Exciting times, anyway, and it's still hard to believe we're now this close to the release!
Part of that is because the Bond films do a lot more extensive location shooting outside the UK, along with even more practical stuntwork and effects.
Hell, compare the budget of something like Skyfall ($150-175 million), which was shot mostly at Pinewood, to something like Spectre ($250-275 million) which shot for months around the world, and shut down whole city blocks and mountains to shoot.
My prediction is that we'll be going back to something like the Skyfall model, with most of the filming happening in one country and way more CG to pick up the slack in terms of stunts and locations.
I was recently talking to a location manager who's worked on some pretty big films and tv shows, and she mentioned that CGI has really changed the job significantly.
Nowadays, the need for extensive international filming has lessened because if the physical area directly surrounding the actor matches, VFX can alter everything else, like a more extensive version of a matte painting.
This is a good point. The hospitality industry, among others, has been diminished, perhaps irreparably, by the virus. Why should cinemas be immune? NTTD's box office needs to be judged by the time in which it is released, not by 2019 standards or earlier.
Bond has an older audience than Marvel/Disney. That audience is probably less likely to go to a theater than teenagers. On the other hand, the older audience has more money to spend on an OnDemand movie. Would older audiences pay $50 or even $100 to see a Bond movie via streaming? Would you? Maybe. It's Bond. And that's what BB and MGW are trying to protect--the specialness of Bond, unlike most other franchises.
We also don't know how much of the budget has been offset by promotional partners...if it works that way.
There will be a point where NTTD starts to feel stale (because of technology, age of the actors, etc.), and they should release it before that point.
Fortunately, Fukunaga seems to have gone for more of a timeless look, and the incidental details of the film (Bond's been away for a while,
The latest I've heard was the Mandalorian model, where they have these LED walls that can project more or less anything -at least when it comes to backgrounds - that is then shot "in camera" and gives the actors something to work against. I think they also built a version of that in Germany for "1899" the new show by the people who made "Dark". The usefulness seems to be mostly in the TV area, where the volume you can get out of backgrounds is much higher against lower budgets, but maybe we'll see something like that more and more with films. However, I feel like the Bond franchise would be one of the last to fully abandon locations and practical shooting.
I sure would welcome less globe hopping and more exploring one location lime in the olden days.
But we are getting super off-topic ^^
I struggle to look at something like Fallout, with its skydiving and Paris-set motorbike/car chase scenes, and its Norway helicopter chase etc. and think that it doesn't have pretty extensive non-UK shooting and practical stuntwork. They even cut a big stunt they shot in Paris out of the film.
What extra value is Spectre giving onscreen? The Mexico parade is wonderful, but beyond that?
You'd think it would only be released if they're 100% certain they're going forward with October.
...you'd think.
If the final trailer drops and they delay it right after, it will be ridiculous at that point.
They did that for the November 2020 to April 2021 delay but obviously those were very different circumstances.
After the shenanigans last September, anything's possible.
...anything.
The main difference is that fewer parts of those sequences were done practically and on location. There's a lot more invisible CGI and mixing and matching of UK locations than meets the eye.
I also never said it was or wasn't justified creatively, I was just explaining why there was such a disparity in budget.
That's why I deliberately brought up Skyfall as a point of comparison, it's budget is almost identical to that of Fallout's ($175 million vs $178 million), and the reason for that is because it was made in a similar way.
Both it and Fallout did do overseas filming, but it was only for a few weeks (maybe a couple of months at the most). Compare that to something like Spectre which shot for nearly 3 months in Austria, over a month in Rome, and another month and a half in Mexico.
For a more extreme comparison, think of something like The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (which did barely 3 weeks of filming outside the UK and used mostly CG for its actions scenes) and something like Tenet, which was shot almost entirely on location in 7 different countries and had tons of practical effects and stuntwork.
Neither had bank-breaking stars to jack up the budget, both had extensive action sequences, involving boats, cars, etc. but one cost $78 million while the other cost about $225 million.
Frankly, I think the next few Bonds will find a happy medium in the Skyfall price range.
A) Because they won't have to pay the lead actor as much, B) CGI getting better and cheaper, and C)The ongoing pandemic means foreign location filming and box office will be greatly lessened.
I notice that those who don't like the film always like to say SF was only successful because of the hype around it rather than anything inherent in the film. I think it's BS. Not to say the hype wasn't part of it, but the movie had too strong legs to simply be brushed off as hype.
Well, the UK is nearly through its third wave with some 80% of the population vaccinated. And the UK is a hot spot for big Bond audiences, so I think Eon etc. will not miss this opportunity. Europe is getting better as well, so by Oct there could be a sweet spot for the international release. The US is more difficult with so many still unvaccinated and many not wanting the vaccination at all (crazy!!!!), so NTTD might suffer a bit there, but Bond has always been bigger for the international markets - so, to answer your question, yes the release should go ahead as planned.
What parts of those sequences were U.K.-based?
Spectre even features more clear U.K. parts, like the Rome Spectre base being an English location.
That all makes sense. I think if I were the studio I’d be looking at Skyfall and asking why they can’t cost the same as that.
It’s hard to predict what’s gonna happen within the next two months, but EU is not getting better. Let’s say everything is still under control but for Bond there are two big factor in play: the risk of new cases spiking after a summer of traveling and parties - just like what happened last year - and the fact that in most of the countries unvaccinated people won’t be able to enter a movie theater (recently in NY as well). We already saw what happened in France with theaters suffering a 70% drop after that new restriction. Plus, there is also a lot of conversation regarding a third dose of the vaccine in order to fight the Delta variant, fueling the fear that vaccines could be ineffective.
Point is the general perception is that the pandemic isn’t going anywhere, it’s a super uncertain time because of that bloody variant. Back in June was different because before the Delta spread the future seemed brighter. Now people looks at September with anxiety, fearing more restrictions (that are already starting to taking place in some places, even China).
I strongly believe that NTTD will come out in two months, but not because the overall situation got that better, only because they just cannot wait anymore and they made peace with the fact that this film is a lost cause.
So my previous account, Mr_Beach got banned yesterday, and I am presuming it got banned for the above comment. Question to the Mi6 Community moderator who decided to ban me for that comment: are you completely out of your mind? How thin skinned does one have to be to ban someone for that comment, let alone without any warning? So petty!
Btw, feel free to ban this account @Benny , I will be back with another one.
On another note, I hadn’t realized @TheWizardOfIce got banned. I assumed he just left the forums on his own accord. Crazy.
@JamesPage is even worse than any mod. He once had a good relationship with EON, but that's the past and now he frequently posts BS articles on MI6-HQ painting EON in a negative light as revenge. So petty and childish. Remember that BS article they published just before the press conference back in the Spring of 2019?
Seriously though, no fan forum treats its members with as much contempt as MI6community does. To be fair though, not every mod here is bad, @Samuel001 for example is a great guy and if every MI6 mod behaved like he does, this would be a much more pleasant place.