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Yep on all points here. It's also been 6 years since the last Bond picture, whereas Marvel churns out film after film; audiences expect and want this. EON has failed to understand this basic concept and Bond will wind up being forgotten unless they go back to its escapist roots.
Remember when the Bond franchise had goodwill and a fresh, energetic BO direction? Oh, wait, that was like10 years ago; a lifetime in Hollywood.
So if, once again, America lags far behind the rest of the world, I find it hard to care. I don't want EON to lose money, of course. But emotionally, if the U.S. misses out on it, I find it hard to get handwringing and upset. Of course the ending is known now, and that will affect some sales, but others will go because they are really curious anyway. It probably does not even out, but I am finding it difficult to feel things are truly dire for Bond, for this film, for EON.
At least I had a cogent if sarcastic response. The point is, the death of Bond is highly unlikely to be a factor.
Just for the record, those are Craig’s grosses adjusted:
SF: $1,323,220 (#1)
SP: $1,015,127 (#4)
CR: $822,328 (#8)
QoS: $751,812 (#11)
So NTTD will likely fall between spot #11 (best case scenario, besting QoS) and #14 (worst case scenario, doing less than DAD).
It's not that tough, really. Especially when we are talking about the longest franchise in history that is well loved.
SKYFALL did great. Why? It was a great movie.
Quantum of Solace flopped. Why? It was a bad movie.
People here are so "brainwashed" by politics that everything needs to be overanalyzed and politicized - "See, people are tired of Bond! We need Halle Berry as Bond for something new!", "Noo, Americans are tired! We need Bond in America to make money from them!", "Nooo, young people don't care about Bond, we need a Bond that will catch a tik-tok teen and will be played by Jake Paul!"
This is how movie studios think, don't fall in the same trap that they are falling. Overanalyizing and trying all sorts of stupid things.
"Hm...this movie did not do as great females between 18 and 22? Could this just be a number? No! We must overanalyize this and we must have more beauty products and cameo from a K-Pop band! Yes! Cause people are stereotypes and they want stereotypical things! Good movie? Nah, we need to specifically do enough things to boost this number with these people!"
Why did Skyfall do great? Why did SPECTRE not do great? It's not cause "Hmm...SPECTRE flopped so I guess.... I guess the people are tired of Cristoph Waltz....yeah, we must change Blofeld with someone that's not Austrian... you see, I guess that WorldWar2 made people not interested with middle-aged Austrian men..."
It's simple. It was not a good movie.
The job should be to see how to make the best movie that will be faithful to the character and the franchise (and in the case of Bond - to Fleming and his works), and not how you can make the best movie for a certain group of people.
Let's not forget that DAD also tried the "let's make something modern, try to set up a spin-off, and do as many things that you can present as "progressive" while abandoning the character's good traits and totally abandoning the story" and it was met the same faith.
It's not that DAD floopped cause _____ (any one reason). It was a mix of reasons that made it a bad Bond movie.
The smart choice would've been to never try things like that again. But they did.
So, naturally the next movie was the furthest thing away from DAD. A book adaptation with an old-timey feel.
And would you look at that, going to the roots worked!
Then, QoS happened. A movie which was a sequel and had lots of problems in it's production. And...it failed.
So, they forgot all about the Quantum organization and started a new story. Bond vs Silva. Skyfall. Bond girls. M.
It did great on the box office cause it was a great movie.
But, the studios did the same mistake they always do. They overanalyze things and come to the wrong conclussion.
They saw that M had a big part of it. They saw that Q and the rest had a big part of it. And they were like 'YEAH! This must be the reason why SF was great!" (it wasn't. Having "Bond+Friends Go On A Mission" was a bad move)
So, they said "People liked SF which had Bond having an emotional moment....so let's pump that up!!! More lore! More family! More emotion! More backstory! Yeah!"
And that flopped critically.
So....unlike the thing with DAD, where it bastardized the character/franchise and they started anew with an old school story... they made the biggest mistake possible - a continuation of SPECTRE.
And it also had production problems just like QoS.
It's baffling that they decided to make SPECTRE 2 (in a a way), while also kinda being a QoS 2 (kinda...)
I really hope they don't overanalyze this and see "Hmmm...NTTD had good action and good cinematography...........and it flopped....hmm...THIS MUST MEAN THAT THE NEXT MOVIE SHOULD HAVE 0 ACTION AND NO CINEMATOGRAPHY! WE'D FILM IT WITH AN IPHONE!"
Cause it's easy to get lost in "what's the reason" when you are paid billions to analyze things and the people paying you are not happy with "Sir? The movie wasn't that great." as an answer they need polls and piecharts so you can tell them why "Black males aged 35-37 watched NTTD 0.3% less compared to SPECTRE" so you come up with all sorts of stupid reasons to justify your salary to the boss so he can be like "YEAH! CAUSE THERE WAS NO SHAVING SCENE! THAT'S RIGHT! NEXT MOVIE? 10 SHAVING SCENES! SKYFALL HAD ONE AND IT WAS GREAT! IMAGINE WHAT 10 SHAVING SCENES WOULD DO!"
BUT
It's a pandemic. The expectations were not realistic in this forum. If the studio expected 900m worldwide... they are insane. If their first line of thinking is "Why did this movie not do 900m?" then this whole thing is pointless.
The movie did not "flop".
It will probably do "ok"
You gotta see the pandemic numbers. And for pandemic numbers...it's ok.
If they approach the numbers as "omg this is terrible" that's wrong. It's pandemic. Plague.
You can't expect normal numbers.
They must see the main reasons why the movie did not do that great, instead of pushing the panic button as "OMG IS BOND FINISHED?"
I hope the studio will use their time intelligently to see what needs to be done.
They did great after DAD and QoS flopped.
They did not do great after SP, cause SP did not fail financially... it only did critically. A fact that studios almost always forget as long as the movie makes money (Venom 2...for example. Same type of movie as the first one... and the first one was not great...but it made money, so who cares)
It is not a factor.
Everywhere in the world the movie has really good holds on its second weekend. So even if people read about spoiler, that didn't stop them from going to the movies.
The only factor is: we are still in a pandemic. Without it the movie might have started with an 80 mio weekend.
However, I don't believe NTTD would have made $115 to $120 million in its US opening weekend had it not been for the pandemic. The Hollywood analysists had already factored in the pandemic when they made their forecast of a $75 million opening, though they might not have considered Fukunaga's comments about this not being a "rapey Connery Bond" or the early spoilers coming out of the UK. I did point out in a much earlier post (before the movie was released) that it was an act of folly for a movie to rely so heavily on non-spoilers or a twist ending when there's a thing called the MSM and social media to let the cat out of the bag.
I also agree with @The_Reaper when he says the long delays between each movie would've dampened the enthusiasm in the US market for the next installment, and they need to get back to churning them out much faster. Like it or not, the quick turnaround of both the Harry and Cubby era was also part of the model that Disney adopted for their own franchises. As did MI and F&F. It's also about momentum.
PS. If Grace is right in her prediction (and I think she might well be) then Prince Charles will be happy with Craig's replacement in Josh O’Connor.
I have to admit, I became a fan through the video games. Because I played GOLDENEYE 64 so much it made me want to actually delve into the Bond series. Today there’s no such equivalent. There’s currently a game in development that will mark the first installment in a decade. Perhaps that along with the casting of a new actor will usher in a new era for Bond and its target audience.
Venom 2 fell down 64.5% on the box office in its second week!
WOW
Alright, now I am taking back my predictions for next week, if this is the new norm.
For reference, if NTTD goes down 64.5% next week it will make 19.88m
Also, something fun.
According to the box office numbers NTTD made....
$56,007,372
56 point..........DOUBLE OH SEVEN! Ha!!! :D :D
No, I don't have any inside knowledge on the exact name of the next actor, but I do have an idea who it won't be. Josh O'Connor isn't my own personal choice for Bond 26, but he is someone I can see them going with in their new reboot. Maybe it's Grace Randolph that has the real inside info? ;)
No need to patronize. I was referring to the doom and gloom of some users. Underwhelming? Certainly. But far too early to get hung up on a singular notion when the film is - so far - undoubtedly a success for EON worldwide. And like you said, it's not over yet.
Personally, I'm just not someone who gets too hung up on numbers as they don't affect my view on a film or not, but I'm not stupid. Yes, films are made to make money. However, EON has clearly been making the films they want to make over the Craig years and I highly doubt a slightly underwhelming opening weekend is going to cause some serious change of course for the series going forward. I could be wrong, but again, far too early to tell.
Die Another Day was far from a box office failure as far as Bond at the box office was concerned in 2002, and yet they changed direction anyways. Seemed to be a decision fueled by creativity, with a gamble on a new Bond, and the bonus was that it ended up paying off.
The change in direction after DAD wasn't really down to the producers as they were ready to go with a Jinx spin-off directed by Stephen Frears that told the orgin story of Giacinta "Jinx" Johnson. Casino Royale came about due to MGM putting the kybosh on the Jinx production and MGM doing a deal with Sony to acquire the rights to CR, for which the producers were the main beneficiary.
I never said anything about making it just for the accolade, but rather that they still got rave reviews by making the story they wanted to tell. I don't see how that is patronizing or a cop out as it was not intended to be an excuse, but rather, an outlook. As much as SPECTRE was a mixed bag among fans and less impressive than its predecessor at the box office it would seem that EON were not deterred at all from finishing that story. While they obviously want the film to make money, they didn't necessarily make the most obvious film to do so by going in this direction. At the very least, that's how I see it - truth or not.
Further to that- as if I don't know that people can share their positive or negative opinions as much as they want to. It only seemed to be trouble when I shared mine. I simply offered my own two cents which I stand by and you even agreed with - it's too early to really make the final call.
But to insinuate that I must just "not understand" even though you yourself said we're all entitled to post what we want? That might be different had I pretended to be an expert on box office, but I didn't. I think at this point we run the risk of arguing over semantics when we didn't in fact entirely disagree with one another.