NTTD footnote: Annapurna’s latest

Annapurna logo

Once upon a time, Annapurna Pictures was supposed to be a thing when it came to No Time to Die. And, in a way, it was. Annapurna and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 2017 formed a joint venture to release each other’s movies Eventually, No Time to Die was included in the deal.

On April 14, Variety published a story about Annapurna. Founder Megan Ellison has been away for more than a year but is back at the helm. However, according to Variety, Annapurna still has a lot of issues.

One of them is the future of United Artists Releasing, its joint venture with MGM. An excerpt from the story:

Renewed interest from distributors could help the (Annapurna) film unit, given that Annapurna is free to seek new partners outside of United Artists Releasing, the wobbly joint venture it sealed with MGM in late 2017. While Ellison has the option to release films anywhere, sources said she was unusually deferential to UAR in the negotiations for “On the Count of Three,” underscoring how dependent she’ll be on the group if no one steps forward to help her place the film in theaters. The pact was set to expire in 2021, but sources said MGM has opted for another year of releasing its own films through UAR (including the upcoming James Bond adventure “No Time to Die”). To extract itself from the agreement would be more costly than it’s worth, one source said, especially as MGM continues to seek a splashy sale, which it is rumored to be pursuing. (emphasis added)

As things stand now, United Artists Releasing will distribute No Time to Die in the U.S. and Canada while Universal will release the film internationally. No Time to Die promotional materials such as trailers have the MGM and Universal logos. Posters have the United Artists Releasing logo but not Annapurna.

The joint venture took the name United Artists from 007’s original studio. MGM acquired UA in 1981. MGM and Annapurna announced the United Artists Releasing name in 2019 on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the original UA.

The Variety story is mostly about continuing turmoil at Annapurna.