Vulture, part of New York magazine on Oct. 22 came out with an article about the “Huge Hidden Costs of Holding a Blockbuster.” While it included various delayed films, its prime example was No Time to Die.
The story by Chris Lee provides pieces of the financial puzzle involving the three COVID-related delays for the 25th James Bond film.
Among them:
–February 2020 Super Bowl ad for No Time to Die cost $5.69 million. The next month, the first of the COVID delays was announceed.
–Product placement partners spent $66 million during 2020 only to see the movie delayed into 2021.
–Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Bond’s home studio, and Universal, the movie’s international distributor, spent $175 million in prints and advertising costs in the last few weeks before the film’s release.
There was also this passage:
While some Hollywood watchers speculated that No Time to Die’s days on the October-release calendar were numbered, others gave voice to a grim reality — namely, that half-siblings Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, the top executives at 007’s longtime production company Eon (which has final say on the film’s distribution strategy), couldn’t afford to hold it any longer. “The Broccolis care about the U.K. more than anything — making it a big hit in the U.K., a decent hit in the U.S. and the rest of the world,” says a person with knowledge of Eon. “But they’ve lost so much money by moving No Time to Die, the marketing has gotten stale.”
The business about Eon Productions most caring about the U.K. has been reported by other outlets. But this article gets into other aspects of the delay. Another excerpt:
In February 2020, Billie Eilish dropped the movie’s slow-burn theme song, “No Time to Die,” which generated 2.2 million YouTube views within six hours and hit the top of the U.K. singles chart). And co-star Ana de Armas graced the cover of the March issue of Vanity Fair — invaluable promotional real estate for which there would be no do-over.
To view the entire article, CLICK HERE.
Filed under: James Bond Films | Tagged: Bond 25, Eon Productions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, No Time to Die, Universal |
The Spy Command 
A little off topic – but I wonder if the film had been ready to release in 2017 or 2018, and hypothetically a pandemic had then hit delaying the release for a similar amount of time, would there have been better box office returns with younger cinema goers in the US? I believe Bond should remain a series of films rather than going down the TV series route, but if they do this the franchise needs to find new ways of engaging with a younger audience make the films a must see. The new computer game may help attract some younger film goers, but I think the key is ensuring that there isn’t such big gaps between movies to build momentum and loyalty that way too. Thinking about an earlier post when the cost of DC’s high fee to the overall budget was considered, does make me question whether the franchise needs to get tougher with actors, get three or four films out of an actor over 10 years and then build a new momentum with a new actor again, constantly bringing in new fans without losing too many a long the way.
Is it worth adding all the money they spend to make a deal with the estate of Kevin McClory to use the character of Ernst Stravos Blofeld as well as S.P.E.C.T.R.E. on screen and yet didn’t seem that important in the end so far in the two films since that deal?
[…] marketing costs among that. The most notable was a February 2020 Super Bowl TV ad estimated at $5.69 million that was flushed down the drain by COVID delays. There were tens of millions of more dollars spent […]