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They'll strip things back down to the "basics" and try to tie the new film in with Casino Royale and Skyfall in terms of the style of film they want it to be and then market it accordingly to the audience. They'll probably also play up the idea of it being Craig's final film in order to get people into the theater, since he's proved very popular in the role.
Bottom line, I realize we are the faithful here, but are we really having a go at North American audiences (hardly a homogeneous group, since they comprise immigrants from all over the world, including many newcomers, Latinos, etc. etc. as well as Canada) for not making Spectre more successful than it was? It brought in $200m at the North American box office, which in my opinion is more than enough (given the film that it was), and on par (if only slightly less) than other Bond films have done in the recent past, bar Skyfall.
I don't think, if we're being honest, we really wanted Spectre, with its legitimately discussed issues (here and elsewhere), to be the top grossing Bond film and poster boy for Bond in North America. No, I'm quite happy that such accolade remain with Skyfall for now.
Let EON come back with a decent story, compelling characterizations, exceptional trend setting action, and superior visuals next time, which I'm sure they will. Then we can hope for better box office.
Spectre did just well enough. No failure, but no trendsetter either. That is like the film. That is just fine with me.
Agreed.
Sadly, though, nowadays, at least on certain sites, not making more than the last one is deemed a failure, regardless of the circumstances and other variables that play into any film's box office potential. Skyfall had every possible variable working in its favor.
Spectre, despite being a terribly average film, did solid business, both in the United States as well as at the global box office. EON and Sony should be glad that a film with all of the problems that Spectre has made as much money as it did.
Exactly. Although a Bond film set partially in DC, Hawaii or the Southwest could prove visually interesting.
I agree with this, too. The highest grossing films should be the best Bond films. And although I count myself a fan of SP, I do not consider it a bona fide classic.
Actually it has done better than QOS. The adjusted rankings for US performance are :
SF - DAD - TND - CR - TWINE - GE - SP -QOS
But yeah it should have done better. I'm going back to one of my previous posts on this thread, but the Brosnan films generally had a more American sensibility - big OTT action, machine guns, American Bond girls, Americans singing the theme songs, American screenwriters having Bond say American phrases, etc, whereas the DC films have placed more of an emphasis on the Britishness, with much more time spent in Britain, UK politics being part of the storylines, a more lean, stripped down style, action scenes tend to be more one on one, etc. You can see this reflected in the box office where SF and SP are two of the highest grossing films of all time in the UK, and CR and QOS out-earned every Broz film.
This all being said, I'm proud of the Britishness of the Craig era. I hate when films are forced to conform to the sensibilities of a particular market. The Craig era has stayed true to its origins and has presented a wonderful array of thematic material on the nature of empires, service and endurance. That is far more valuable to me than making sure Bond says "bathroom" instead of "lavatory."
As I mentioned earlier on this thread, CR had tremendous legs in the US and when you look at its overall gross compared to its opening weekend, it had a superb multiplier. So DC grew on US audiences over time. They had no idea who he was when the film was released and it wasn't necessarily an action fest - however its multiplier suggested that was not an issue. If DC was known to US audiences at the time of CR's release, the overall box office might have been much higher. Again, who knows?
QoS wasn't as successful but I think many will agree that this film was not for everyone (the debates on this forum should confirm that). I think many can say the same of SP too (again, based on discussion on this forum), although obviously the film has fans.
PS: Our 'on break' Swiss forum member indicated a while back that DAD was the #1 film in Germany and Suisse so it wasn't just a North American misjudgement.
It did better than MI:RN ...pretty good take considering the general consensus of the quality they gave us.
Did comparatively worse in Japan and China so stop blaming the US for not liking such a mediocre film.
But so many people tend to forget that Sony's makes box office predictions...and box office predictions. The first are for us media frenzy posters, the latter are for the real industry and are most of the time secret and disclosed.
Sony/Eon/MGM were expecting another $1 Billion film. I'm sure of it.
Take it easy, Mr. M'urica flag waver.
He's not blaming the US he's saying it's just disappointing that SP didn't do as much business as was anticipated. Secondly, the US market is notorious for feeding average to crap movies with their hard earned cash. The TF movies on average make around 350million domestic...that says it all really.
Thanks, good to see someone understood what i was saying. :)
China (the fastest growing large market) put Transformers Age of Extinction firmly on top in 2014 and that PoS (imho) FF7 on top in 2015. Yes, SW-TFA did not even surpass it.
As I said before, I'd rather we get a good film than chase some excessive box office targets. Some large markets look for attributes in their films that I'd rather Bond not focus on. Excess special effects for instance (FF7 and Transformers being the perfect example).
It was a good film, but nothing that special.
Paul Walker's exit was well handled. That's the big draw the film had, and it presented the themes of friendship, family and loyalty extremely well and with a lot of heart.
No he is and the US like every other country is not a homogeneous culture in tastes to say the least. Why single out the US is my point.
I mean I could have said the American SF audience has a higher standard now compared to other audiences that blindly accepted that pathetic effort..
It's like blaming the diners for a bad meal.
We spent almost 200million on your crappy movie... what more do you want???
You spent way more on Furious 7 so I think his point stands.
I mentioned the North American market, because it does seem to be the only region where the admissions for SP were significantly down on SF. Elsewhere, despite what people thought of the film, SP did actually manage to obtain admission figures similar to SF.
ps i'am not blaming the diners for the bad meal. I did enjoy SP, but it was far from being the most rewarding Bond experience i have had at a cinema, and i can understand why the film didn't click so well in N.A.
Better than having a financial (LTK) or creative (DAD) disaster to make a point, or alternatively another outsize global success (SF) everywhere which could have led to overconfidence, stagnation and creative vegetation.
It's all worked out well enough at the end of the day. B25 will impress. Worldwide.
SPECTRE sold an estimated 22.95 million tickets in North America. That's in line with Bond movies since 1995, with the exception of Skyfall, which sold a lot more tickets than the other Bond films of the period.
GoldenEye: 24.4 million.
Tomorrow Never Dies: 26.9 million.
The World Is Not Enough: 24.8 million
Die Another Day: 27.6 million
Casino Royale: 25.4 million
Quantum of Solace: 23.4 million
Skyfall: 37.8 million
I didn't see it. Besides there's 250 million here as opposed to what 60 million.
I concur.
Interesting. No wonder they don't want to make the admission numbers public. I imagine other movies & franchises being the same....people waiting to stream or get the movies on blu ray etc
Personally, I think it's more preferrable that Bond get higher critical reception than box office reception. It's usually spectacle rather than a good film that gets major success in the box office market (the Transformer series, for instance, and at times, Bond as well). Bond flicks almost always makes it into the top 7 or 8 worldwide grossing films of their respective year - I think at that rate, critical reception is more important than huge box office numbers. The Bond franchise is doing fine financially (as of now).
I said it before (probably 10 times) and I will say it again:
- Outside the US Spectre made almost exactly the same money that Skyfall did! A L M O S T E X A C T L Y! It is only due to the massive increase of the Dollar value that it appears to be 120 Mio USD less when reported in USD. And this is without 50s anniversary, whithout Adele, without Olympia spot and without the general praise that SF received upfront!
- We could even go through the list of major countries and we would see that in local currency or even based on admissions SP did indeed challenge and partly surpass SF
- Of course the much better China numbers also helped SP internationally
- However, in the US (and Canada), SF was a total exception. To expect the same money from SP would have been quite stupid by Sony. SP did not perform very well there, but as posted above, the actual admission number was similar to the Bond standard there
EDIT:
It should also be mentioned that SP underperformed in France (as a second major market next to the US) which can probably be atributed to the terrible terrorist attacks on the weekend SP was released