Das James Bond 007 Forum

Michael3390 hat geschrieben: 20. August 2021 09:12 Vllt, machen sie es diesmal tatsächlich so, dass der Film überall dort läuft, wo er gesehen werden kann und in anderen Ländern wird er eben verschoben.

Gernot hat geschrieben: 20. August 2021 06:41 In Australien und Neuseeland wurde der Kinostarttermin offensichtlich von Oktober auf November verlegt aufgrund von Covid-19...

And even in the unlikely event that COVID infection rates trigger another wave of sheltering at home this fall, conventional movie-industry wisdom now holds that the 25th James Bond installment, No Time to Die — which has seen its release date shift three times already — will stick to its October 8 date. Although Amazon struck a deal to buy Bond 25’s distributor, MGM, for $8.5 billion in May, the release strategy is still dictated by Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, the chief executives at 007’s longtime production company, Eon. According to a person with knowledge of business practices at Eon, everyone’s expectations there have been adjusted downward.

“They’ve lost so much money by moving [No Time to Die]; the marketing has gotten stale,” this person says. “The Broccolis care more about the U.K. than anything — making it a big hit in the U.K., a decent hit in the U.S. and the rest of the world.”

Even in an era of rising streaming dominance, the movie industry is still a hits-driven business. And despite a recent report that North American box-office revenues plummeted 80 percent in 2020, hitting a 40-year low amid the coronavirus crisis, neither Sony nor MGM had ever seriously considered selling Venom and No Time to Die to deep-pocketed OTT platforms like Netflix or Apple+. But if Hollywood has learned anything from the success-with-multiple-asterisks box-office run of Black Widow — which became the biggest hit of the pandemic era over its July opening weekend, dropped a calamitous 67 percent in its second weekend in theaters, and earned a surprisingly robust $125 million via premium rentals while still falling decidedly short of pre-coronavirus financial expectations — it’s that big movies can expect to earn around one-third less than usual in these iffy times. “With pockets of Europe, Latin America, and now Australia getting hit [with the Delta variant], instead of doing $100 million, a movie now does 50 or 60,” one studio executive says. “If the business is off by 30 percent, that kills us. But Bond feels ready to go. MGM is a one-movie company. I don’t think they can hold it another six months.”

When it comes to Bond, Eon is crossing its fingers that audiences’ comfort levels shoot up above 81 percent again and is “hoping for the $700, $800 [million] range,” the source close to the company says. “There’s no way they’re going to get there. But there may be some cover: ‘We probably weren’t going to do a huge number. We can blame COVID, do some business in the U.S., and move on.’”