About that SPECTRE budget

SPECTRE poster

As Eon Productions decide what to do next with the 007 franchise, one issue is whether the series can sustain SPECTRE-sized budgets.

In early December 2014, director Sam Mendes joked that Pinewood Studios’ 007 Stage was, “The stage where budgets go to die.”

Not long after, the humor faded as the hacking at Sony Pictures revealed a memo by a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer executive saying the SPECTRE budget was heading well above $300 million, various outlets reported, including CNN Money. Efforts were underway to reduce the budget and gain, among other things, incentives from Mexico to help defray costs.

Before the movie came out in fall 2015, reports (citing studio representatives who weren’t identified) had the budget down to $240 million or so. Regardless, the movie was expensive, putting it in the neighborhood of comic book-based movies such as Marvel Studios’ two Avengers films and Warner Bros.’ Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

There were, no doubt, lots of reasons for the outlay. But two scenes spring to mind.

One was a Rome car chase, which cost 24 million British pounds (around $36 million at the time). Eon seemed rather proud of the spending, giving the Mail on Sunday  lots of access to describe how it was filmed.

The thing was, the chase was mostly plot exposition. During much of the chase, Bond (Daniel Craig) is on the phone to Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) asking her to check out the supposedly dead Franz Oberhauser. It wasn’t exactly in the class of 1968’s Bullitt or a more recent film such as 1998’s Ronin.

The other scene came near the end of Bond’s escape from a SPECTRE lair. The agent blows it up. In November 2015, after the movie’s U.S. release, the Bond team uploaded a YouTube video saying the explosion was a world’s record:

 

 

“Largest explosion in the history of movies,” a pleased Mendes says in the video.

Except, was it that dramatic a moment? Bond and Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux) already had made their escape. Obviously, blowing up SPECTRE headquarters would require a big explosion. But did the extra cost of making it a world’s record actually add to the story? Was the extra spending an artistic choice or ego?

Just to remind everyone, this blog had a favorable review of SPECTRE. At the same time, in some respects SPECTRE indicates that Eon should at least review its spending.

Put another way, would SPECTRE have been harmed if, say, only 12 million pounds had been spent on the car chase? Would artistic integrity been compromised if the SPECTRE lair explosion not been a world’s record?

What’s more, the series on occasion has dialed back — most famously with 1981’s For Your Eyes Only which followed 1979’s Moonraker.

It’s going to be a long while before Bond 25 comes out. Consider this post food for thought.

 

Reading between the lines of THR’s story on MGM and Sony

SPECTRE teaser poster

The Hollywood Reporter has A STORY BY GREGG KILDAY examining whether Sony Pictures will no longer release 007 films after SPECTRE. But the story has some other interesting data as well.

Sony has released all four Bond films of the Daniel Craig era, but its current two-film deal expires with SPECTRE. Here’s a look at some of the other side issues raised in the story.

SPECTRE’s budget: Kilday quotes sources he doesn’t identify as insisting “that the final net budget now stands in the neighborhood of $250 million.”

It’s known, thanks to the Sony hacks, that SPECTRE spending was on track to reach around $350 million. The Hollywood Reporter story suggests that production placement and similar deals (such as the subsidies Mexico paid out to the production) helped bring in about $100 million to offset a substantial portion of those costs.

Mind games between studios: There’s also an anecdote in the story about some mind games between Sony and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio that controls half of the Bond franchise along with the Broccoli-Wilson family.

According to the story, MGM told Sony in June 2013 if it wanted its name in a press release announcing the release date of the then-untitled movie, Sony had “to opt in immediately.” At the time, there was no firm budget but Sony was being pressed to commit anyway, THR says. (Not mentioned in the story: there wasn’t even a first-draft script. That wasn’t submitted by initial writer John Logan until March 2014.)

The release was issued in JULY 2013.It had this joint quote from Sony executives Michael Lynton and Amy Pascal: “It’s a privilege to work on the Bond films. EON, John Logan and Sam Mendes have come up with an extraordinary follow up to SKYFALL and we, along with our partners at MGM, can’t wait to share this new chapter with audiences all over the world.”

Subsequently, Logan was replaced writing the movie and Pascal was fired after bad publicity from the Sony hacks.

To read the entire Hollywood Reporter story, CLICK HERE.

Some notes about the Daily Mail’s SPECTRE story

SPECTRE poster

This weekend, the U.K. Daily Mail’s Event arts section had A STORY about SPECTRE, the 24th James Bond film.

Here were some things in the article that caught our eye:

200 million/300 million: Price in British pounds and U.S. dollars for SPECTRE’s overall budget.

The figure, which makes SPECTRE one of the most expensive movies of all time, was originally disclosed in the hacks at Sony Corp. But the Daily Mail was given a lot of access for this article. The fact the publication is using it amounts to a tacit confirmation of the hacked information.

24 million/36 million: The price in British pounds and U.S. dollars for the budget for expensive sports cars (Aston Martins and Jaguars) to be smashed up in chase sequences.

Possible cost of delays: During filming of a Rome car chase, “one of the crew tells me that every hour of rain could cost the production a cool million pounds,” according to the Daily Mail story.

It took a few months, but we finally got our Barbara Broccoli “the money’s up on the screen” quotes. In fact, we got two.

Long-serving producer Barbara Broccoli tells Event she is immensely proud of those stunning pre-title scenes: ‘My dad Cubby Broccoli always said, “Put all the money on the screen.”

‘There’s a lot of money on the screen in this one! Bond has such an extraordinary tradition of awe-inspiring openings, it is difficult to top them. But this sequence is up there as one of the greatest.’

To read the entire story, CLICK HERE. No real story spoilers, but those especially sensitive fans (i.e. the ones who consider trailers and commercials to be spoilers) may want to think twice.

SPECTRE concludes filming, MI6 site says

SPECTRE, the 24th James Bond film, concluded principal photography this weekend, according to a story on the MI6 JAMES BOND WEBSITE.

The website said production officially ended on Sunday, July 5, the MI6 site said. Principal photography began Dec. 8, 2014.

The film is the most costly 007 film and one of the most expensive movies ever, with a budget of $300 million or more. It follows 2012’s Skyfall, which had worldwide box office of more than $1.1 billion. The new movie features a revamped version of the SPECTRE organization featured in the early James Bond films.

The end of filming was referenced on social media. Here’s a July 4 tweet from Donald Mowat, a makeup artist:

hard to believe this is our final day shooting Spectre! what a journey it has been

— donald mowat (@donaldmowat) July 4, 2015

On July 5, he sent out another Tweet:

fantastic Spectre wrap party tonight in London

— donald mowat (@donaldmowat) July 5, 2015

SPECTRE is scheduled to be released in early November by Sony Pictures.