Disney makes 2 moves that may affect Bond 25

Image for the official James Bond feed on Twitter

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.

Our modest proposal for Harrison Ford’s next movie

Barnaby Jones main title

Harrison Ford, who turns 75 in July, has had a long run playing heroic figures, principally Han Solo and Indiana Jones.

For a time, it seemed as if Ford was taking a back seat to other actors. For example, in 2011’s Cowboys and Aliens, he was clearly a supporting player to star Daniel Craig.

Then, in 2015, Ford was a big star again with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, where he got top billing playing Han Solo once more. However, Han was killed by his son who had given into the Dark Side of The Force.

Meanwhile, there’s supposed to be a fifth Indiana Jones movie but nothing scheduled for at least a couple of years. Do we want Indy pushing 80? Or is it time to retire Indy?

Which gets us to a more practical idea: How about Ford starring in a movie version of the 1973-80 television series Barnaby Jones?

Think about it for a minute. Ford already is older than Buddy Ebsen was when he filmed the Barnaby Jones pilot. (The veteran actor was 64 when the show’s first episode aired on Jan. 28, 1973.)

Barnaby Jones out-thought his opponents, assisted by his daughter-in-law Betty (Lee Meriwether) and, in later seasons, by a much-younger cousin, J.R. Jones (Mark Shera).

It would be an opportunity for Ford to use a different set of acting skills compared with Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

Plus, audiences clearly still like Ford. As a result, a Barnaby Jones movie would still get attention in the 21st century.

Just something to think about.

More from Daniel Craig’s New Yorker appearance

Daniel Craig and Christoph Waltz at December 2014 media event.

Oct. 12: Updated to include a quote from another website in the eighth paragraph from the James Bond Radio website.

After reviewing more accounts of Daniel Craig’s Oct. 7 appearance at The New Yorker Festival, here are additional points that may be of interest.

Did the actor read Ian Fleming 007 stories?

Lee Pfeiffer of Cinema Retro had A DETAILED ACCOUNT  of what Craig said during his 90-minute interview with The New Yorker’s Nicholas Schmidle. It included this passage:

Craig said that throughout his life he has always enjoyed seeing Bond films but had never read Ian Fleming’s novels.

This differs from comments the 48-year-old actor has said previously. In AN APRIL 29, 2012 STORY IN RETUERS, Craig said he and director Sam Mendes had read the Fleming stories before Skyfall was filmed.

“We were in continued conversation, once Sam agreed to do it,” said Craig. “We weren’t supposed to talk to each other because MGM hadn’t done the deal.

“But we couldn’t shut up. It was a chance for us to reread Ian Fleming, and we started emailing each other, ‘What about this and what about this?’, and that’s how it snowballed.” (emphasis added)

However, THIS JAMES BOND RADIO POST said, “Wilfred (Picorelli, who reported on the event for the website) reports that Daniel said that he had read all the novels and watched all the films.”

OK, let’s say Craig first talked about not reading the novels before being cast, then read them afterward. But then why DID HE SAY IN 2011 that the “name of a Bond film is not about anything. Live And Let Die? Octopussy? What does it mean?”

They’re pretty much explained in the books and sometimes the movies use the titles for characters, such as in Octopussy. If you had read all of the Fleming stories and seen all of the movies, you’d know what (in the short story) or who (in the movie) Octopussy was.

Bond’s attitude toward women: According to the Cinema Retro story, Craig commented about Bond’s attitude toward women.

Asked about long-time criticisms that the character of James Bond was sexist, Craig commented on a clip from “Spectre” in which Bond seduces a character played by Monica Bellucci and pointed out that charges of sexism against Bond were misguided because such scenes are meant to be viewed with a degree of camp.

In 2015, in an interview with a website called The Red Bulletin, Craig described Bond’s attitude toward women this way:

But let’s not forget that he’s actually a misogynist. A lot of women are drawn to him chiefly because he embodies
a certain kind of danger and never sticks around for too long.

Misogynist is defined as “a person who dislikes, despises, or is strongly prejudiced against women.”

Craig confirmed his Star Wars: The Force Awakens cameo: “Craig verified internet rumors that he was indeed in the latest “Star Wars” movie, playing an anonymous Storm Trooper,” according to Cinema Retro.

Tweets by others in attendance also noted Craig’s comments.

“Why would you play a stormtrooper at this point?”

Craig: “What a stupid fucking question!…STAR WARS, for fuck’s sake!” #TNYfest

— Phil Nobile Jr. (@PhilNobileJr) October 8, 2016

To read the entire Cinema Retro account, CLICK HERE.

Believe it or not, some people saw SPECTRE this weekend

SPECTRE teaser poster

Well, some hard-core James Bond fans saw SPECTRE this weekend as movie theaters were consumed by a tsunami of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

The 24th James Bond film was No. 12 in the U.S. and Canada with an estimated $1.445 million in ticket sales, ACCORDING TO BOX OFFICE MOJO.

The movie’s screen total was cut by more than half in the region. SPECTRE was available on 1,225 screens for the Dec. 18-20 weekend, 1,439 fewer than the Dec. 11-13 weekend.

The big news in theaters, of course, was the seventh Star Wars film, the first in the series since 2005. Its estimated U.S.-Canada box office was $238 million, a record-shattering performance. The previous record holder was this year’s Jurassic World at $208.8 million.

With its overseas take, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is more than halfway to a billion dollars at $517 million.

Meanwhile, SPECTRE’s global figure is now at $824 million and its U.S.-Canada figure is an estimated $193.9 million as its run in theaters winds down. On an unadjusted basis, SPECTRE is the No. 2 007 film behind Skyfall’s $1.11 billion.

UPDATE: Later on Sunday, Box Office Mojo updated SPECTRE’s worldwide box office to date to $836 million.

What will be the No. 1 spy movie in the U.S. for 2015?

“Do I look like I give a damn?” Blofeld asked.

As the Year of the Spy winds down, there’s a little bit of drama, such as it is. Will SPECTRE or Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation be the No. 1 spy movie in the U.S. and Canada?

At the start of the year, the answer would have been a slam dunk — SPECTRE, the 24th James Bond film was the heavy favorite. It was the followup to Skyfall, the No. 2 movie in the world in 2012 and the No. 4 for the U.S. and Canada.

However, that was before Paramount moved Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation from Dec. 25, Christmas Day, to July 31.

That move got the fifth Tom Cruise M:I movie out of harm’s way from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, due out Dec. 18. The M:I film became a summer hit and took away the spy audience from The Man From U.N.C.L.E. movie that came out two weeks later.

To be clear, SPECTRE already is the global spy movie champ ($792.6 million so far versus M:I Rogue Nation’s $682.3 million). But SPECTRE isn’t doing the same business as Skyfall globally and it’s significantly behind the pace of Skyfall in the U.S. and Canada. The region contributed $304.4 million of Skyfall’s $1.11 billion box office.

As of today, it’s still an open question whether M:I Rogue Nation’s $195 million in the U.S. and Canada will hold up as the top spy film in the U.S. and Canada. SPECTRE’s box office in the take totaled $185.1 million through Dec. 7.

Agent 007, of course, still is in theaters. Daniel Craig’s Bond is certainly within striking distance of Cruise’s Ethan HUnt.

Still, as time goes on, SPECTRE is being shown on fewer screens. Its first weekend, Nov. 6-8, SPECTRE was on 3.929 screens, according to BOX OFFICE MOJO. That was down to 2,840 for the Dec. 4-6 weeekend.

The guess here is that SPECTRE will eke out the U.S.-Canada win. It has one more weekend (Dec. 11-13) before Star Wars: The Force Awakens sucks up screens (and ticket sales).

Still, the race shapes up to be considerably closer than what was expected at the start of 2015.