Bond 25 questions: The marketing & box office edition

No Time to Die logo

We’re a month away from No Time to Die being released in the U.K. It appears the 25th James Bond film is done with delays and ready to confront the COVID-19 pandemic head on. Naturally, the blog has questions.

What’s the movie’s global box office going to be?

In the pandemic era, the movie with the largest global box office total is F9: The Fast Saga at about $704 million. Can No Time to Die match or exceed that? Naturally, Bond fans think so. But box office totals depend on more than hard-core fans.

What are the marketing dynamics?

To begin with, it’s a three-headed monster.

–You have Eon Productions, which makes the movies. Eon’s Michael G. Wilson said in 2015 that the company really manages the marketing. The distributors just execute Eon’s plan.

“We create it, they execute it,” Wilson said at that time.

–You have Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Bond’s home studio, which foots the bills. No Time to Die is being distributed in North America by United Artists Releasing, a joint venture of MGM and Annapurna Pictures.

–You have Universal, which is distributing the film internationally. Supposedly, Universal was selected because of its track record, which included turning The Fast and the Furious series into a $1 billion per film juggernaut per film prior to COVID-19. In that case, Universal ran the whole show. Now it’s dealing with another studio and a strong-willed production company.

On Aug. 24, Vulture, the arts website of New York magazine, had a story about the difficulty in scheduling movies amid COVID-19. It quoted someone it identified only as ” a person with knowledge of business practices at Eon.

“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.” (emphasis added)

If true, it’d be interesting to know what MGM/United Artists Releasing thinks about that. It’d also be interesting to get the view of Universal, responsible for a lot more than just the U.K.

Anything to be on the lookout for?

The marketing is gearing up. Some commercials have run recently. Assuming there isn’t another delay (there have been five to date), we’ll be getting to judge the marketing efforts for ourselves.