No Time To Die has a very high box office mark that it’s got to hit: it’s going to be quite a mission for James Bond.
Throughout the course of the pandemic, we’ve seen studios try a range of tactics to recoup the cost of a negative, whether that be selling it to a streaming platform, making it available for a premium fee on digital platforms or simply delaying its theatrical release until everything returns to ‘normal.’
With No Time To Die, MGM has repeatedly opted for the latter, despite exploring the option to sell the film to streaming services. Whilst patience may ultimately prove to be the right option for the latest 007 outing, a new report has emerged from MI6 HQ, the James Bond website, which suggests that the longer the studio refrain from releasing the film, the less likely it is that it will see any profit from it. In fact, if the site’s number crunching is anywhere near accurate, it’s likely that MGM could be facing a significant loss.
With the film currently scheduled for an October 2021 release, the report states that its costs have spiralled up to $314m, due to the cost of the negative itself, plus expenses incurred during Danny Boyle’s brief tenure on the film. There are also regular interest payments that the film incurs of around $1m a month whilst it sits unreleased.
Add to that somewhere between $150m-$200m for print and advertising plus the $30m the film already spent on marketing on previously slated release dates and you get to a figure of $464m at the very least. When you consider that MGM will only see about 50% of each ticket sold, the report estimates then that the film would need to do $932.8m at the box office, just to keep MGM out of the red. Of course, there are also home releases and such like that’ll mitigate that.
It’s a steep figure box office figure by any reckoning though, with only 2012’s Skyfall ever hitting that mark. When you add in the ongoing effect of the pandemic, where we’ve seen the box-office numbers of other major blockbusters severely impacted by reduced cinema attendance, and it seems nigh-on impossible. Although perhaps only James Bond could pull this off.
The report itself is well worth a read and you can find it here. The film itself heads to the UK on September 30th.
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