Disney makes 2 moves that may affect Bond 25

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Walt Disney Co. announced a series of release date changes, according to Variety. Two of them may have something of an impact on Bond 25 in 2019.

Most directly, it set a Nov. 8, 2019 release date for Nicole, where the daughter of Santa Claus takes over the family operation.

Not a lot is known about the movie (its IMDB.com entry is skimpy) other than it stars Anna Kendrick.

Eon Productions and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer announced in July that Bond 25 will be released the same day, despite the fact no distributor has been selected. MGM, which went through bankruptcy, isn’t big enough to release its major films and cuts deals with other studios.

Assuming neither Bond 25 nor Nicole changes dates, it would continue a familiar pattern of Bond opening against a family-oriented movie.

In 2006, Casino Royale opened in the U.S. opposite Happy Feet, an animated movie about Penguins. Happy Feet had the bigger opening. In 2015, SPECTRE opened opposite The Peanuts Movie, another animated film. Bond came out on top that weekend.

The other Disney move, and probably more substantial, is the studio shifted Star Wars Episode IX to Dec. 20, 2019. The movie had been slated for a May 24, 2019 debut.

The change in dates occurred after Disney unit Lucasfilm announced J.J. Abrams will direct Episode IX, replacing Colin Trevorrow.

Having a Star Wars movie come out at Christmas probably narrows Bond 25’s box office window in the U.S. Something like that happened in 2015, when Star Wars: The Force Awakens (also directed by Abrams) dominated the Christmas box office.

In the U.S., SPECTRE had a box office of $200 million, down from the $304.4 million for 2012’s Skyfall.