Ohmss: flop or not?

2»

Comments

  • Posts: 15,111
    Not so much as a flop than a disappointment, albeit it was perceived as a flop at the time. Sometimes, the success of a movie is a pure matter of perception.
  • edited October 2015 Posts: 2,015
    Birdleson wrote: »

    Regardless, in the US it had one of the Top Ten box offices of 1969.

    Well the short answer is : it's an illusion :)

    It is in the top 10 of the box offices released in 1969, but it actually made only one week of money in 1969, and then most of its money in 1970 and after, and there it would not have been in the top 10.

    This shows one can always twist the figures as one wants.

    Also, I'll add one thing : the box office dollars you can see here and there is not the money the producers make back. They see in particular far less money from the international markets, and far less money even at home when time passes. Success at home and frontloading are very important for the studios. It didn't make "box office minus budget" for the producers, far from it.

    And well, Michael G. Wilson probably knows what he talks about, why not believe him ? Possibly the shares of the benefits from OHMSS were planned along the previous Connery releases, and it didn't went well with EON ? Imagine the shares went high only above some box office threshold that it never reached, for instance.

    PS : With the leak, we have unprecedented access to the business talk within the studios. If I remember correctly (and well, I probably don't), early in the developement, when the budget was around 220M$, according to the studio operatives SPECTRE needed
    600/700 M$ WW with a big share in the US
    to start making money back. We can look at some data sheets on this topic in the leaks full of projections. If the budget is now close to 300 M$ you can "understand" why the studio bosses
    were asking for cuts everywhere, even on action scenes and sets
    .
  • Posts: 1,548
    Great film, non-actor. A very curious entry in the Bond canon. Substitute Craig for Lazenby and the film would be a classic.
  • Posts: 12,526
    Not a flop! Fantastic film!
  • Posts: 15,111
    RogueAgent wrote: »
    Not a flop! Fantastic film!

    It's intrinsic quality is entirely irrelevant though.
  • MayDayDiVicenzoMayDayDiVicenzo Here and there
    Posts: 5,080
    Shardlake wrote: »
    echo wrote: »
    Ohmss needed an actor like Connery. It didn't need the chocolate guy or the Marlboro man.

    There's a world of difference between the acting of Connery ('63) and Connery ('67). I fear we would have gotten Connery '67 in '69.

    Exactly people need to forget the actor that played Bond in those first 4 films, Connery was bored and sick of the role. He would have just been doing OHMSS for the money and most likely they'd have tweaked it for a more seasoned 007.

    Bond needed to be more vulnerable and this isn't a quality I ever saw him display as Bond and lets face it Connery is a fine star and can carry pictures but I think we get a little bit carried away with his god like status. Other people could and did play Bond after him.

    Absolutely. Couldn't have said it better.

  • pachazopachazo Make Your Choice
    edited October 2015 Posts: 7,314
    I think Lazenby gets a hard time, I remember my parents and others of their age group refusing to accept it as a Bond film. It was referred to in my house growing up as "that awful one, with the Australian guy, you know the one he gets married".
    This was exactly how it was in my house too. My dad loved Connery and my mom loved Moore so old George was odd man out, so to speak. They never read the novels so they couldn't appreciate the other aspects of the film. Lazenby's bad reputation (which was partially his own fault) kept this film blacklisted by many for decades. It wasn't until I discovered Fleming as a teenager that I began to break the mold of that narrow minded viewpoint.
  • BondJasonBond006BondJasonBond006 on fb and ajb
    Posts: 9,020
    Flop is a term that can be interpreted differently.

    In terms of money I believe OHMSS was not a flop. I can't remember ever hearing anybody speaking of OHMSS as a flop in the various documentaries.

    In the end box office and ROI are the deciding factors.

    Here is something I have saved on my computer, it is rather interesting to see which movies were the most profitable! As a business analyst such numbers are the ones that are the most interesting to me.

    Look at OHMSS and how profitable it was

    full.jpg

    Return on investment (ROI) measures the gain or loss generated on an investment relative to the amount of money invested. ROI is usually expressed as a percentage and is typically used for personal financial decisions, to compare a company's profitability or to compare the efficiency of different investments.

    The return on investment formula is:

    ROI = (Net Profit / Cost of Investment) x 100
  • edited October 2015 Posts: 2,015
    How can you guess Net Profit when it's a secret :)

    To see how hard it is to understand box office from the 1960s, here is the box office first week of OHMSS in the States : as you can see, not in every town, and the figures are not $, but ratio of average earnings...

    599243Capture.jpg

    And yet if you look at the tallies from the "year" Alice's Restaurant is well below OHMSS...

    Movies were still making quite some money 5 years after their release, and I'm pretty sure it's added to the "original year box office", even though it's very counterintuitive.

    So, well, I believe Michael G. Wilson !

    And here's why they called Connery back :

    223679Capture.jpg
  • It made money but not as much as previous Bonds but more than some others. It's an outstanding as we all know and describing a film as a 'hit' or a 'flop' commercially doesn't lean into the quality aspect. I say this in mid of Transformer 4 being in the top 10 movies of all time. Enough said there really...
  • thedovethedove hiding in the Greek underworld
    Posts: 5,418
    After listening to the Bond and Friends podcast that talked about the 50th Anniversary I think it worthy to bring this thread back to life. I am fascinated with the idea of "flop". Are we talking artistically a flop, or financially a flop? I think the movie more then succeeds artistically. Financially, the return wasn't as high as was expected with a Bond film so I suppose you could coin it a flop.

    Reminds me of the Justice League movie, although probably in reverse. That movie was artistically a flop but financially a huge hit. Although even by the numbers the studio didn't make the money it hoped.

    Back to OHMSS, I think artistically it was a hit. Though I personally think with Connery in the role we'd have a bigger artistic hit on our hands. I think of the poignancy of the resignation scene between M and Bond. After 6 films that would have packed more punch. We might even had been spared the reflections of previous missions moment and instead had Bond just sit and drink in the office. I think the Moneypenny moment at the wedding would have had greater gravitas with Connery.

    Back to the Bond podcast I heard someone say that Cubby had postponed OHMSS as a way to save Connery. They knew he was close to burn out and decided to hold the film back. I find that fascinating as it would show a different side to the Connery and EON relationship. They were maybe trying to keep him as Bond and were trying to placate him. I am surprised that they used OHMSS as the launching point for another Bond as the material was far more meaty then DN, or even LALD. This movie required a great deal from the actor playing Bond and to place that pressure on an unknown Aussie was a real gamble that ultimately didn't play off.
  • Posts: 19,339
    Not..............ever.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    DRush76 wrote: »
    Comparing the "OHMSS" box office against previous Bond films and calling it a flop doesn't make sense to me. It may have not made as much money as Connery's films, but it made a profit of $57.6 million dollars profit. That's pretty decent for 1969/70. As far as I'm concerned, it was a hit.

    It was only surpassed by Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid that year.
Sign In or Register to comment.