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Comments
That's true, and is a good point. ROI in itself should not be the only measure, and I personally have problems with % only measurements exactly for the reason you noted. ROI has to be used in conjuction with overall box office (inflation adjusted) to see the full picture.
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I do think that a multiplier is relevant as a measure of risk though.
If I had to stake $2m to make $70m, it's far less risky than staking 20m to make $100m, even though my profit is $12m higher in the latter instance.
I also would need a bigger opening weekend (due to the way films are front loaded these days), more time in the cinema in the best theatres (including high yielding IMAX) and a bigger marketing budget. All riskier in a crowded movie market.
Films like CR or GE had excellent returns on investment with minimal risk to the studio due to the smaller budgets, even if they did not net as much in absolute terms as SF (which also had an impressively low budget, relatively speaking, compared to QoS).
A film like SP (with its alleged $300m production budget......add another $200m for marketing) really has to take in some serious $$ to break even. I'm sure it will do fine and may even break records, but still, the risk is higher.
Nooo way , unless you are blaming him for it as well and know secrets non of us know lol.
Now for real what echo means is that after 9/11 peop,e were not in the mood for the more lighthearted Bond and Casino Royale had to happen.
I have to ad it you made me laugh with your question
That all action films changed after.
I think what it mostly came down to was Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli finally wanting to put their own stamp on the Bond series instead of living in Cubby's shadow. And after obtaining the rights to the first Bond novel in Casino Royale it seemed like fate. By the 90s/early 2000s James Bond felt like a nostalgia act and Wilson/BB were pretty much coasting off of Cubby's legacy. But there comes a point where the kids want to spread their wings and fly on their own. And with Brosnan's contract being finished and the rights to CR in their hands, the timing was perfect.
No offense taken at all, and I understood the joke that's why i added the lol at the end and asked if you know any secrets on non us know hehe. Maybe you work for the CIA or something lol.
And i agree all action films changed after that
" I think what it mostly came down to was Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli finally wanting to put their own stamp on the Bond series instead of living in Cubby's shadow"
I'd never thought of it that way before but think you're right. =D>
( Well I agree with you anyway ) ;)
A TV show like 24, which focused on realistic espionage and thriller action already made Bond look like a joke at tge time of it's release in 2001. When DAD came out the following year, coupled with Bourne coming out in 2002 also, the credibility of the Bond movies had a massive light shon on it and it's credibility was severely compromised for everyone to see.
How can a TV show like 24 and a movie like Bourne exist and yet the king of spies is faffing about smirking, dropping lame quips and displaying action akin to parody? It didn't matter how much money DAD made, EON needed to sort their sh*t out.
That was exactly my feeling during that time. I was actually embarrassed to be a Bond fan during the TWINE/DAD period.
I was absolutely relieved when I heard they were rebooting, but wasn't sold on Craig. I remember the first time I saw him at the press junket getting off the boat, I thought who is this tosser? Has EON gone mad?
I then quickly read up on him, saw Layer Cake and knew they were onto something. When this photo was released, I realized EON had indeed finally got their sh!t together.
My all time favorite picture of Craig as Bond. I wish they let him keep his hair at that length.
A return on investment is THE real mark of success in business in every model I understand that isn't based on fleecing the investor. Part of that is the interest that accrues on the money spent making the film until the return comes in, and especially with all other expenses needing to be paid off before 'net profits.'
LIVES OF OTHERS is easily the best spy film of the century, except maybe for TINKER TAILOR, so the LOO success is a deserved one.
Some Bond films I love have been amazingly financially successful, some have only been merely successful.
I don't get the fascination with the numbers game here.... :-??
You could also ask why does anybody care if this one 'makes' more than that one, unless you happen to be a stockholder.
I think it is trivia that escalated into part of the perception of a film, like the thing that emerged in the 90s about having to make 100 mil to be a 'hit' -- even if you spent 92mil making it, ensuring it would not really be a profitmaker even if the perception of it was that it succeeded, based on that misguided numbers game.
Personally, I've monitored the budgets on a number of shows since I was 19 or 20, starting with the first STAR TREK and BLUES BROTHERS, which I thought were absolutely criminal overspending cases (I still haven't even seen the latter.) I usually boycott films that seem to be insane with their budgets because I don't like or respect profligacy unless the filmmaker himself is putting his own money where his mouth is (APOCALYPSE NOW is a good example, or on a smaller scale, TUCKER.)
Except for the Nolan films, I don't usually see where the money goes on pics above 150 mil. The last quarter-centuy (post LTK) Bonds, with all the incentives from product placement, are a good example for me of where did all that money go, and considering SKYFALL is practically a backlot movie in terms of main unit (never left UK except for a few weeks for the PTS), its budget seems utterly absurd to me.
:))
You imply that EON are only interested in box office. I thinks Babs was impressed by the tone and quality of Bourne. That is what they were responding to.
The way BOURNE 1's fights were done was a seemingly haphazard mess that only work (for whoever likes them) due to hysterical cutting to cover the fact that the action wasn't captured effectively in-camera. CR, for all the myriad faults I always find with it, delivered fights that were good 'movie' fights, matching the ferocity of Bourne but staged with much more credibility. Wish I could push the credibility button for something else in CR, but noooooo ...
I'll qualify my BOURNE remarks by saying I saw the movie once, in a theater, and couldn't believe how bad it looked and played. I was paying attention, because I was supposed to write an article about it, so it wasn't just me dozing through it either. Except for the Owen character (and this was years before I even knew who he was), nothing worked for me in the whole thing.
I remember in particular only three bits: a down-the-stairs car chase that just yawned at me, a fight in a bank that was lamely staged, and the climb-the-wall bit that is entirely an effect achieved in editorial, as it doesn't look like the guy is actually making an ascent at all on his own.
The bits I've seen of the Greengrass ones on TV make me think that they must be even worse, what with the OTT shakeycam stuff.
I'd see more of a correlation (in terms of recent film being an inspiration) between GOLDENEYE and TRUE LIES, if only because Cameron brought back the multliple set-piece notion in a big way, but for all I know the GE tank chase was already on the boards before TRUE LIES hit theaters.
I was in awe at what I was watching in the theatre when I sat through the Bourne Identity and wished EON could do something like this (I remember thinking that as I watched the film).
What stood out in particular was:
1. the score (excellent work by John Powell and a complete contrast to the garbage, imho, that Arnold was putting out at the time for Bond). Shades of the great Bernard Hermann's score for North by Northwest, similarly about a man on the run with identity problems.
2. One was certainly able to make out the fights in the first film. The fight in Bourne's Paris apartment still gives me the shivers to this day. Absolutely amazing, and a far cry from the nonsense that EON put out in the same year between Bond and Zao.
3. The Mini car chase was inventive and had similarities to some of the great car chases in movies, including Ronin and the French Connection. Kinetic and frenetic. A far cry from the overstylized, dated one in DAD
4. The acting was 'real' and believable. I felt for Bourne and his troubles, as well as Marie. They seemed like real people trying to get out of extraordinary circumstances. Compare that to the Madonna/Jinx nonsense in DAD and the difference is like night and day.
5. Most tellingly, with Bourne they were able to convincingly make a 'hard' spy believably smitten with a girl without losing his alpha male bona fides. This was at a time when Bond was last seen humiliating himself imho on account of Electra.
All of the above points (and there are many more) were addressed when EON delivered their masterpiece that is CR, but it was done the Bond way, eg. with the glamour, style and wit that we have come to expect, but had long since given up on ever seeing from them again. This is why CR was such a revelation to me and others.
BATMAN BEGINS/THE DARK KNIGHT
JASON BOURNE
QOS clearly was made because of Bourne.
SF clearly was influenced by The Dark Knight
As for the Bourne quartet the Greene movies a very well written and filmed/edited some of the action-scenes are superiour to what 007 has shown in its last two movies. Yeah they changed the way the spy genre was done for a time. But that said DAD did its own thing and the audiences loved it too.
For me CR happened because of 9/11 and because EON finally got the rights to CR the novel and they made easily the best 007 outing of the last three.
Same happened to me when Calvin Klein went for young
Trendy models and dropped all the old, fat bloke models. ;)
Totally agree. I find the criticisms of Bourne from some Bond loyalists a bit unconvincing. Acknowledging that the Bourne trilogy was pretty damn impressive and a game changer for EON is not the same as slagging off Bond.
It will be interesting to see how the new Bourne measures up against Bond. I personally felt the Paul Greengrass approach had run its course with the third movie.
Sorry but not at all. For an independent film (or any independently-financed business) this is very important. The bond films are financed by Sony Pictures which is a publicly financed company limited by guarantee. The investors in Sony are shareholders. The multiplier is of very little relevance.
Well stated, both of you. The Craig movies were clearly influenced by Bourne (which were influenced by Bond, down to the initials). Starting with LALD, the Bond producers became reactive to movie trends, rather than setting them as they did in the '60s, and that approach has held through Moore, Dalton, Brosnan, and Craig's tenures.
Look I'm talking critically, not financially, money shouldn't take account into how good a film is, peoples tastes shifted to more serious and down to earth spy thrillers right around the time of The Bourne Identity's release. DAD was a bad movie, successful, but also bad. The reason EON wanted to reboot was because in terms of the canon of the novels, Casino Royale was Bonds debut, the introduction of the character, and coming off of a film like DAD, EON wanted to avoid going down that road, and bringing Bond back to the style of Fleming and early Connery, they wanted to establish that this is a new timeline, where films like YOLT, TSWLM, MR, DAD would never happen. Bond is in the real world, and much of that can be accredited to Bourne. I'm not saying Bourne is better, but his influence certainly played part in re-shaping Bond for the modern day audience
I personally don t think that is the reason for the change in style, though. It was all about the CR rights finally coming home.
(people who say his hair was too long in GE haven't seen this)