Skyfall storyboards surface on eBay

A set of 52 Skyfall storyboards has shown up for sale on eBay with a “buy it now” price of $350. Here’s the description:

“Not eBay again!”

Anyone want to know what happens in the new Bond film? This is a sequence of 52 Crew Copy, Production used Storyboards from the latest instalment. Buy it now price is less than $7 per Storyboard!

If you go to THE EBAY LISTING, it includes four storyboard samples. The samples do provide spoilers. There are no many plot revelations in the four samples but you can piece together at least some of what is going on in the scene.

According to the listing, the storyboards will remain on sale until 1:54 p.m. Pacific time, July 11, unless somebody plucks down that $350 right off the bat.

Back in March, a set of Skyfall call sheets that included information about the film including character names (at a time many character names hadn’t been disclosed) and basic descriptions of scenes was sold on eBay.

Sony watch: studio looks for second-half 2012 surge

Sony Corp. and its Sony Pictures subsidiary (which includes Columbia Pictures) is looking for Skyfall, the 23rd James Bond movie, to be part of a surge in the second half of 2012 after a mixed first six months of the year.

Highs and lows in first six months: Last month’s Men in Black 3 (which had Skyfall’s teaser trailer attached): has seen its worldwide ticket sales pass the $500 million mark, according to June 18 story in the Los Angeles Times. The movie, though, had a reported $250 million production budget and a reported total cost of $375 million.

The 21 Jump Street comdedy in March (based on a TV drama that helped make Johnny Depp a star) has been described as a hit, getting good reviews and selling $36 million in tickets its weekend ticket sales in the U.S., and $137 million total versus a $42 million production budget. Meanwhile, Adam Sandler That’s My Boy comedy flopped, selling $13 million in tickets its opening weekend after costing a reported $65 million to make. Sandler movies had been a consistent money maker for Sony.

Second-half hopes: Sony is rolling out The Amazing Spider-Man, starting the Peter Parker saga over following the 2002-2007 three-picture series. Viewers will get yet another take on the original Stan Lee-Steve Ditko origin story. The movie is showing up internationally and will be in U.S. theaters in time for the July 4 holiday.

Sony in August has Total Recall, a remake of a 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger film . The new version got a boost this week. Universal decided to delay The Bourne Legacy movie to Aug. 10 from Aug. 3, avoiding a head-to-head competition with Total Recall. According to THIS STORY on Nikki Finke’s Deadline entertainment-news Web site, there had been complaints from movie theater executives about both films coming out on Aug. 3. Sony, meantime, also has a Meryl Streep-Tommy Lee Jones Jones comedy Hope Springs on Aug. 10.

Skyfall won’t be out until the fall (October in the U.K., November in the U.S.), part of a two-picture deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to release 007 movies. Sony and MGM want to get the Bond films back on an every-other-year schedule. It remains to be seen whether Eon Productions, which actually produces the Bond series, agrees.

Sony shows a 4-minute Skyfall preview; rumors confirmed?

Sony Corp. this week showed a four-minute preview of Skyfall during an event in Spain aimed at executives of movie theater chains, according to a story in the Hollywood Reporter. Berenice Marlohe, one of the Bond women in the film, was part of the proceedings.

Daniel Craig in a Skyfall publicity still

Could the showing be at least a partial confirmation of Internet rumors? A poster on the Commander Bond Web site referenced a friend who saw a four-minute extended trailer but had to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Around the same time, an IMDB.com user claimed to have seen a four-minute trailer without providing details.

On the one hand, it seems quite a coincidence that all three mention a four-minute preview and/or trailer. Perhaps it’s not much of a stretch that Sony would also seek audience reaction while pressing those in attendance to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

On the other hand, could most people remember virtually every shot, as IMDB.com user tom-sudddd suggests he was able to do so? Also, that account includes this:

M SHOOTING A GUN! I think it was the P99!

M? Judi Dench? Judi Dench shooting a Walther P 99?

Well, there was a publicity still of Ralph Fiennes as Mallory (who may or may not take over as M) shooting a sizeable handgun.

We’ll stick with our caveat emptor of a previous post for now. But the timing of the Internet tidbits about a four-minute extended trailer/preview is interesting.

Rumors surface about extended Skyfall teaser

Caveat emptor: IMDB.com user tom-sudddd claims to have seen an extended Skyfall trailer that’s about four minutes long.

You can read the full post BY CLICKING HERE. A sampling (spoiler alert, if true):

The title bit is amazing! Bond turns and shoots at the screen, wearing a suit. A gunbarrel forms around him and spins. Bond walks slowly toward us, with his gun at his side, through the gunbarrel (like the teaser poster)

The dialogue, i can’t remember much of, it all went over me. There’s bits and pieces of it. Bond introduces himself though! “Bond James Bond.” I think he’s saying it to Bardem. The music is about 3 minutes worth of that electronic Bond theme from the teaser, new mix then it turns into a fully orchestral Bond theme. It sounded very nice.

There’s also a long list of shots, where the poster says he saw Ben Whishaw as Q, Javier Bardem as villain Silva and a gimmicked up Aston Martin DB5, plus more shots of stars Daniel Craig and Judi Dench.

No details about where, or how, tom-sudddd managed to see this extended trailer. A day before, a poster on the Commander Bond Web site says a friend in Berlin saw an extended trailer but had to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Meanwhile, bear in mind, that another IMDB.com user, calling herself Liz, earlier this year posted a description that, in retrospect, didn’t sound that close to the teaser trailer that emerged in May. Also, final movie trailers tend to run about 2:30, not four minutes.

So we go back to how this post began: caveat emptor.

3 things to note before declaring Skyfall best 007 movie ever

Last week, the entertainment Web site Whatculture! presented 5 Reasons Why Skyfall Might Be the Best James Bond Film Ever. Author Chris Wright opined:

I am confident that this will be the best of the series so far and a hell of a way to celebrate the momentous 50th Anniversary. (emphasis added)

Wright has bought into Barbara Broccoli’s comment how Skyfall may exceed the 22 previous installments of the series made by Eon Productions. What follows that people may want to keep in mind regard Whatculture!’s reasons that Skyfall will be the best:

An A-List cast and crew doesn’t guarantee success: Imagine a movie with at least five former or future Oscar winning actors and a crew that included a director, a composer, a director of photography and an editor who had all won Academy Awards. You’d have The Swarm, Irwin Allen’s 1978 disaster movie that was a critical and box office flop.

The cast included Michael Caine, Olivia de Havilland, Jose Ferrer, Patty Duke and Henry Fonda, all of whom had either won Oscars up until then or would receive them in the future. Producer-director Allen had an Oscar on his shelf (for a 1953 documentary), as did director of photography Fred Koenekamp, composer Jerry Goldsmith and editor Harold F. Kress. All of those crew members, including Allen, had other Oscar nominations.

Is this a pretty extreme example? Absolutely. But it’s not unique, either.

Third-time-the-charm rule has a mixed record: Author Wright, cites one of his reasons thusly:

With Skyfall marking Daniel Craig’s third time in the lead role, the history of the series suggests this might be his finest instalment. When Sean Connery and Roger Moore were both starting out in the role it took them both three films to fully settle into the part and make it their own. Goldfinger and The Spy Who Loved Me are both considered to be among the best of the series and it is no coincidence that these are both the third films for each actor.

What about Pierce Brosnan and The World is Not Enough? Brosnan’s third Bond movie did fine at the box office but it wasn’t universally proclaimed his best outing. Nor did the film have the impact of either Goldfinger or The Spy Who Loved Me, the latter giving the series a jump start. Maybe Daniel Craig’s third film will have that kind of impact, but again merely being the actor’s third film isn’t a guarantee.

The Aston Martin DB5?: The 1960s sports car has been driven by Bond in two mega hits (Goldfinger and Thunderball), in two Pierce Brosnan movies (GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies) and Craig’s Casino Royale. In terms of impact, it played a central role pretty much only in Goldfinger, where it was the movie’s centerpiece gadget. You don’t see it after Bond gets to Nassau in Thunderball. In the Brosnan and Craig movies to date it’s more like an homage to the earlier movies. In Casino Royale, Craig/Bond wins the DB5 in a poker game against a secondary villain. Any super-priced luxury car could have substituted had a DB5 not been available.

Despite that, Whatculture! says the DB5 will be a leading reason why Skyfall is No. 1.

Again, this is not a prediction that Skyfall is going to bomb at the box office or be a bad 007 movie. Fans say you can’t say that until the movie is out. Again, predicting Skyfall will be No. 001 among 007 movies is a matter of faith at this point.

Commander Bond Web site debuts a revamped look

The Commander Bond Web site, which has been around since 2000, this month debuted a new-look home page.

Commander Bond’s Twitter avatar

Commander Bond is one of the most-visited of the 007 fan sites. It never went away — its message board is one of the most visited in Bond fandom — but for a period scaled back. That’s not a criticism; maintaining a fan site over the long haul can be hard.

In any event, Commander Bond has revamped its home page and is again producing articles in addition to its message board.

Among the offerings: a a breakdown of the Skyfall teaser trailer; a translation of a German newspaper story abut Skyfall filming; and an analysis of the role M play play in Skyfall.

Wilson and Broccoli’s plans for a non-007 horror project

Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, co-bosses of Eon Productions, want to do a non-007 horror project. In fact, this project has kicked around for a few years and would be based on a story that generated a 1957 movie and multiple radio adaptations.

The 1957 movie based on an M.R. James story

Background: The official Web site of the Broadway musical Once, based on a 2006 movie,which picked up a number of Tony awards, had THIS REFERENCE about creative personnel responsible for the show.

John Carney (Writer and Director of the Film, Once)

John Carney is a Dublin-based writer director who came to the world’s attention following the box office hit and critically acclaimed musical feature film Once, which garnered multiple Independent Spirit, Sundance and Raindance awards. Previously, John was a bassist in the Irish rock band the Frames, where he met Glen Hansard. These musical roots continue to be evident in John’s work with his latest production, Can a Song Save Your Life?, heading into production in NYC in 2012. Other upcoming projects include Dogs of Babel for David Heyman and Nathan Kahane starring Steve Carell and a feature adaptation of M.R. James’s Casting the Runes for Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson. (emphasis added)

Wilson and Broccoli (not to mention Frederick Zollo, Broccoli’s husband) are among a group of producers for Once, the Broadway show. So this isn’t something that came from a U.K. tabloid newspaper. Anyway, Casting the Runes is a story by M.R. James (1862-1936), a writer of ghost stories. It was adapted in 1947, 1974 and 1981 for radio. It also was the basis of a 1957 movie titled Night of the Demon in the U.K. and Curse of the Demon in the U.S.

The movie starred Dana Andrews and involved a demonic cult. You can read a detailed summary BY CLICKING HERE. By coincidence, the crew includes two people who’d have an impact on 007: writer Charles Bennett (co-scripter of the 1954 CBS version of Casino Royale) and production designer Ken Adam, who’d design the sets of seven Bond films.

The Once Web site isn’t the first time Broccoli and Wilson signaled their interest in the project. In 2009, there was a program at the University of Southern California about James Bond in the 21st Century that included a number of panelists involved with 007 movies. Speakers included Wilson, Broccoli and 007 screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. The PROGRAM DESCRIPTION included this reference to Purvis and Wade:

After delivering their screenplay for Quantum of Solace, they wrote Barbarella for director Robert Rodriguez, to be produced in 2009 by Dino DeLaurentiis, and have adapted John Le Carre’s latest novel, The Mission Song, for producers Simon Channing-Williams and Gail Egan. Their most recent collaboration is with director John Carney, on an adaptation of an M.R. James horror story, Casting the Runes.

Is Casting the Runes still an active project? Hard to say. Potential movies can kick around for years (just ask fans of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. who’ve waited for decades to see if a movie version would develop). But it would appear it’s still of interest to the co-chiefs of Eon.

Mad Men meets 007 (not once, but twice)

Mad Men, the popular drama on cable network AMC, had its season finale on June 10, which included not one, but two, James Bond references.

The most noticeable was how the episode ended with Nancy Sinatra’s rendition of You Only Live Twice, written by John Barry and Leslie Bricusse. The fifth 007 film made by Eon Productions premiered premiered 45 years ago this month.

However, there was an earlier Bond reference, albeit a brief one. Near the episode’s conclusion, Jon Hamm’s Don Draper was in a movie theater. While no images of the movie were shown, the first several notes of Burt Bacharach’s main theme to the 1967 spoof version of Casino Royale, could be heard. That film had its 45th anniversary in April.

The Sinatra song has an interesting back story, familar to many, if not most, 007 fans. Namely, Barry and Bricusse wrote two versions. The first, performed by Julie Rogers, was deemed not good enough. The second, the Nancy Sinatra version, is a 007 fan favorite though Sinatra was so nervous, the song had to be cobbled together from multiple takes. If Mad Men fans are curious (and don’t already know the story), a 2006 special on U.K. television about the 007 theme songs provides the details:

This isn’t the first time Mad Men referenced 1960s spy entertainment. In 2010, the popular show included a clip from a first-season episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

UPDATE: Time magazine’s review of the episode picks up the You Only Live Twice connection and runs with it.

A primer about movie economics

When Skyfall, the 23rd James Bond movie comes out this fall (October in the U.K., early November in the U.S.), some fans will check news accounts concerning ticket sales in movie theaters. Last year, the the i09 Web site provided a primer about movie economics that 007 fans may want to consult if they want to determine the financial bottom line for Skyfall.

A few of the pointers:

The final cost of a movie goes beyond its production budget: Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, the Skyfall producers, have hinted that the film’s budget is about the same as the $230 million budget for 2008’s Quantum of Solace. They haven’t provided any figures, but they are presumably aware of the reported outlay for Quantum (if they’re not, that raises the question of how well they’re doing their jobs). By not denying Skyfall costs the same as Quantum, they are implying Skyfall’s outlay is about the same.

In April, Skyfall star Daniel Craig said movies generally cost as much to promote a movie as it takes to film it.

The io9 primer takes it a step further:

(T)he Print & Advertising (P&A) costs of a movie can be incredibly high — for a small $20 million film, the promotional budget can be higher than the production budget. That’s because those films are often romantic comedies or kids’ movies, which are cheap to make but still need a lot of promotion. For a film which cost between $35 and $75 million to make, the P&A budget will most likely be at least half the production budget. And the numbers only go up with bigger films.

Studios don’t get as much of a cut of opening weekend ticket sales as they used to: Again, from io9:

Nowadays, with many of the bigger Hollywood blockbusters, the theater chains just get a standard cut of the whole revenue, regardless of which weekend it comes in.

(snip)

So as a ballpark figure, studios generally take in around 50-55 percent of U.S. box office money.

For studios, international ticket sales aren’t as profitable as U.S. ticket sales:

So if a film does incredibly well overseas but flops in the U.S., does that make it a hit? As with everything else to do with box office, the answer is “it depends.” But generally, domestic revenue seems to be be better for studios than overseas revenue, because the studios take a bigger cut of domestic revenue.

According to the book The Hollywood Economist by Edward Jay Epstein, studios take in about 40 percent of the revenue from overseas release — and after expenses, they’re lucky if they take in 15 percent of that number.

So why is all of this significant? For 007 fans, there are a few reasons:

Quantum of Solace cost almost as much as a later Harry Potter movie. The later Potter films cost about $250 million to make, just $20 million more than Quantum’s reported production cost. Potter movies generated worldwide ticket sales of as much as $975 million each. The top-grossing 007 film was 2006’s Casino Royale at $596 million.

Fans often cite how Bond films get the majority of their ticket sales outside the U.S. That’s been true for quite some time. But for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Sony Corp., which actually pay the bills (not Eon Productions), that may not be as reassuring as it sounds. Put another way, despite whatever studio bosses say in public, they’d like to see a higher level of U.S. ticket sales for Bond movies.

007’s overseas box office power is still important: Other studios would like to follow the Bond model and have higher non-U.S. sales. Again from io9:

But still, overseas box office does matter, more and more. And stars who have a huge global following are more likely to open a movie than ones who are only famous in the U.S. — just look at the fact that the world-famous Tom Cruise is still starring in movies, despite his ongoing backlash in North America. Mumpower points out that Cruise’s Knight and Day only made about $76 million in the U.S., against a production budget of $117 million. But since Knight and Day made $262 million overseas, chances are it will end up being profitable once home-video revenues are factored in.

So what’s the bottom line? Skyfall’s ultimate financial success won’t be determined only from its U.S. opening, or even its final worldwide ticket sales.

For example, The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo, another movie starring Daniel Craig, had a reported budget of about $100 million and worldwide ticket sales of almost $300 million. Yet, MGM (which, like with Skyfall, co-financed the film) disclosed in March the movie was a money loser. Skyfall’s bottom line may also be more complicated. In any event, all of this is something to keep in mind when Skyfall hits theaters later this year.

An obscure 007-Hitchcock connection: Charles Bennett

This week, there was a dialogue among proprietors of 007 Web sites among connections between James Bond and director Alfred Hitchcock. Perhaps one of the most direct ties (behind the camera) is also the most obscure.

Writer Charles Bennett worked on 1940’s Foreign Correspondent starring Joel McCrea

One of the most cited examples was how North by Northwest’s crop-duster plane sequence inspired a scene in From Russia With Love where a helicopter dive bombs 007. The U.K. Daily Mail wrote up how Ian Fleming hoped Hitchcock would direct a Bond film before the Eon Productions series began production.

However, the most direct connection is the 1954 adaptation of Casino Royale that aired on CBS, starring American actor Barry Nelson. It was co-scripted by Charles Bennett (1899-1995). Bennett was a screenwriter on a number of Hitchock films, including The 39 Steps (1935), Sabotage (1936), Secret Agent (1936) and Foreign Correspondent (1940). Bennett also co-authored the story that was the basis of the 1934 and 1956 versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much.

By the 1950s and ’60s, a period that included the first Casino Royale adaptation, Bennett was mostly writing for television. His work also included one episode of The Wild, Wild West, “The Night of the Eccentrics,” that introduced Count Manzeppi, intended to be a recurring villain. Manzeppi, played by Victor Buono, would only return for one additional episode (which Bennett would not write). Still, the episode is rather quirky, and includes Richard Pryor as one of Manzeppi’s henchmen.