MGM says nothing about Bond 25 on conference call

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer said nothing about Bond 25 during a 24-minute conference call to discuss 2016 earnings.

CEO Gary Barber didn’t mention Bond 25 in prepared remarks. Shareholders asked no questions despite recent reports last month in the New York Post and Wall Street Journal that MGM had been shopping itself to an unidentified Chinese buyer. The deal came undone late last year, the Journal said.

MGM instead highlighted remakes it has in production or planned, including Tomb Raider, Death Wish and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. The company also said it plans to increase its “content spend” this year to $400 million to $440 million from $218 million in 2016.

In March 2016, Barber said on an investor call that Bond movies would come out on a three- to four-year cycle. There has been no significant news from the studio about Bond 25 since.

MGM isn’t big enough to release films on its own and cuts deals with other studios to distribute and co-finance movies. MGM doesn’t have a distribution deal for Bond 25. The last four 007 films have been distributed by Sony Pictures. Sony’s most recent two-picture Bond deal expired with 2015’s SPECTRE.

The latest conference call is archived on MGM’s investor relations page of its website.