News on NO TIME TO DIE (no spoilers)

This is laid out clearly in a 2012 interview with the BBC when he says his experience on the Beach was so bad he wouldn’t see himself directing any big budget movie, we must not forget the guilt he felt over being forced to cast DiCaprio over McGregor, which meant they didn’t speak for nearly 2 decades.

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Fantastic analysis which brings a lot of light to the personal relationships between EON and the people at those studios.

One thing, however, is troubling me: BB saying she wants the next Bond to top 1 billion dollars internationally.

Yeah, sure, I understand that she wants and maybe even needs Bond films to grow on the market. That is the economic idiocy which has to crash someday but is continuing in every field and market these days.

But to achieve that it will have a dramatic impact on how the film is made, what kind of story can be told etc.

Which in turn makes the statement given by Boyle to Orion´s mate just typical Hollywood bull. “How big or small he wants the picture to be is up to Boyle”?

Not if the film has to do 1 billion internationally.

Pretty much what he said, though there were apparently other relationships damaged by it, just McGregor was the most high profile.

My thoughts exactly. Which is making me think that Boyle/Hodge’s idea for the story must be massive.
For the film to gross that much internationally they are going to have to reach Avengers levels of ‘epic’, if you know what I mean.

It gives us plenty of things to worry about as fans, because I have a feeling that whatever this big idea is, it will be very divisive.

Bond 25 HAS to be a huge picture, if they want to make that sort of money. A taught, quiet espionage thriller won’t bring in the same amount of cash.

Oh completely, he was the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
Referring to the statement made by BB, I think she is actually saying the American market is not what it was and it’s easier for them to chase 1billion internationally than go for a 500 million gross in the US

I do think absolutely no-one thought she was literal, was more of her saying “relax” but (own thoughts here) Skyfall was a smaller film that is the only Bond to break that mythical billion line, so Boyle may be allowed to keep it on the smaller side of the scale (relatively speaking for a Bond film) - you do have to keep in mind, he’s putting Sunshine, 28 Days Later and Slumdog Millionaire in the “small” bracket. The smallest of those 3 was allowed to close off sections of London.

I have one qualm about Boyle directing - the amount of f***ing “think pieces” I’m going to have to see about what Boyle will bring to Bond, all of which are based on remembering how cool they thought Trainspotting was when they were 12 and not having knowingly seen any other Boyle movie. I’ve already seen 6 of the damn things.

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I beg to differ. SKYFALL wasn’t a smaller film. It was a huge mega-budget film planned for the big anniversary, attempting to cement Craig as THE Bond of his age, with landing a prize- and great reviews-baiting Sam Mendes as director. All this contributed to it breaking that billion dollar barrier which only Marvel extravaganzas or Star Wars-episodes have a chance at.

I do agree that EON (nor most production companies or studios) have doubts about the importance of the US box office and therefore set their sights on international revenues (and China in particular). But to strive for that kind of uptick in box office with BOND 25 (SPECTRE with all the goodwill from SKYFALL and the massive PR budget only surpassed the 800 million mark) will have consequences for the content of this film.

And I would not be surprised at all if Boyle at the end will again be crushed to find out: yep, these big blockbuster films chew you up and spit you out. Mendes will have told him so, too. But it´s human to underestimate this and to believe: with me things will be different.

Skyfall is small for Bond (though still bigger than most films not now made by Disney, which is I think where we’re differing in opinion), with the vast majority of the work being done in the UK, the main unit only traveling abroad once and the films largest scale set piece being at the beginning of the film which audiences didn’t seem to mind but this is all with the same logic that film studios love to push, that opening weekend receipts and film quality are in anyway connected. Just look at Suicide Squad - awful film, but a beautifully done marketing push that made the actual film almost irrelevant. Drive did the same thing, market it like it’s a fast and furious style action movie to get bums on seats :seat: with obvious logic that it doesn’t matter if they are disappointed at that point if it’s nothing like that, they’ve paid for their ticket by then.

Should also say Skyfall also had the benefit of a very pro-Brit atmosphere in 2012, brought along by the Olympics, the feeling towards Britain now…not so good.

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I see your point. But as far as I know SKYFALL´s budget was bigger than CR´s or QOS´ budget. And the decision to base most of the film “at home” does not seem to have brought the costs down. That’s why I do not consider it a small(er) Bond film. AVTAK or LTK definitely had their budgets cut down and therefore were “smaller” Bond films in that respect.

As for the marketing - maybe BB gave Universal the billion as a number mainly to put the pressure on their marketing to generate the necessary audience awareness and the huge opening weekend that decides everything.

And I have to admit: Sony´s marketing, IMO, became less impressive with every succeeding Craig film. So, maybe Universal can improve on that.

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This seems likely.

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Universal has a solid marketing structure. Always have and also don’t rely on sponsorship or product placement. They don’t ignore it either. Their machine was doing this long before any of that stuff. 25 may end up being the most heavily promoted Bond film ever in media alone.

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Quantum of Solace’s budget was higher than Skyfall’s.

Really? How much?

Difficult to say, really. The figures floating for QUANTUM’s budget range between $ 200m and 230m, much like the figures for SKYFALL.
The exact sums will only be known to the production and today depend heavily on tax incentives. Meaning in effect the tax returns for specific parts of a production may come in only later. Meanwhile the bills must of course be picked up, which temporarily saps away on your production budget. I suppose it’s possible that SKYFALL was only marginally less expensive than QUANTUM - or even a bit more expensive.

I saw $200-230 million for QoS and ~$180 million for Skyfall.

I think if we’re going to say that there’s no way anyone here can really know what DC is getting paid for these movies then the same can be said for the movie’s budgets.

In other words… probably not worth discussing.

We don’t know the exact sums, all we see are estimated figures. Still, those estimates aren’t entirely baseless. If you went into the books for the respective films and took it all down to the last cent you’d probably arrive in the vicinity of the sums discussed.

It’s not as if it’s all just black magic and fantasy; there are a number of confirmed and verified elements - number of days the production was shooting, cast and crew on location, so forth - from which to base estimates and backtrack the entire budget. Most of this guesswork is done on a fairly solid basis by people familiar with the industry.

That numbers still can range between $ 20m or 30m is more down to the varying circumstances of a production and different benchmarks. For example, spent money you will get back by one of the various tax incentive schemes will not show up in the final budget. Or will it? Because you will of course have to spend it first. And you may get it back significantly later. Or, worst case, if your bookkeeping guys aren’t worth their money and forget to hand in the necessary paperwork in time, you may have to forget about it period.

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I know, I’m just saying that for the purposes of this discussion it’s way too hard to say which film cost more when the estimates have about a $50mil range to them…

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From The Numbers site (https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/James-Bond#tab=summary) it looks as if every production costs more than the last one, with a couple of near margins where we can assume the studio tried to keep a firmer lid on the coffers. Always keeping in mind that this is what we’re allowed to know.