The rumour Barber would get sacked has been going around for years. Yet he managed to convince shareholders he’d have a proper plan for MGM’s future time and again; so often I think by now it comes as a surprise again he’s actually out.
Annapurna suppposedly getting US distribution for BOND 25 has been reported, then again a long spell of nothing followed and recently it looked uncertain again. In any case, the global distribution and financing of BOND 25 are still the lion’s share of the business, and that needs sorting.
MGM’s board of directors finally realised the current course wasn’t going to get them anywhere, after sailing circles around the same set of visions, under the same captain for eight years. One would hope this recent step to change guard would come with a clear alternative plan to just chugging along on the 007 meal ticket.
If that is the case, and provided they can implement an authoritative and convincing strategy soonest, well, then they could still come to a fast agreement on a distribution deal and BOND 25 could still make its release in 2019.
Remember that DC was contracted to shoot 2 seasons and 20 episodes of the series “Purity” for Showtime this year and they convinced them to put it off until after Bond 25, so if Bond 25 is postponed, his Showtime contract might force him out…
“MGM and Eon have yet to announce a foreign distributor for the movie, but sources say Warner Bros. is at the top of the list. It is unclear how Barber’s exit impacts those talks, or getting the film into production.”
Right - that project seems to have been put on ice, too. But I don’t think that they would want to force him out if he insists on doing Bond first. An unhappy star is not something any production company wants to have to deal with.
I guess Showtime has enough other series and projects to do in the meantime - and a Jonathan Frantzen-adaptation might garner interest and awards but not a big audience anyway. Prestige projects can wait and still do what they need to do at a later date.
The CEO of Showtime has already stated Bond 25 first, then ‘Purity’. So there is obviously a plan in place there. Unless the mess at MGM pushes Bond 25 back further. Then Showtime / DC might reconsider.
Much will depend on who is taking over after Barber and what plans they have for the immediate future. Or rather, which of Barber’s plans they can agree with and what will be thrown out of the window. Provided there is already a feasible strategy for BOND 25 in place there is no real reason why they wouldn’t follow that for the time being and keep the schedule. Always provided the studio (Warner?) is willing to go along…
Remember how Sam Mendes was originally hired as a “consultant” because hiring him as a director would have triggered first payment from MGM to EON and they were going through bankruptcy at the time?
Maybe Danny Boyle’s “I’ll direct if the script works out” is the same kind of thing, and that they are kind of parking him for awhile until some now obvious turmoil at MGM is worked out?
Everything´s possible. But I do believe this time it´s what they said.
It just sounds likely that they were going to prepare the P&W script but could not secure a name director. Then they got Boyle to come in - and he said: oh, I have got a brilliant idea.
This happens with directors all the time. They always want to be the ones who have the idea to save everything. So they throw out the existing ones. Regardless of whether the old one was brilliant and their own is just… also good.
Since they want Boyle they will play along until it becomes clear that they don’t want the new script at all. But it´s much more probable that they will catch the big fish (Boyle) by accepting the Hodge script anyway (and then, when the inevitable production rewrites come, every script changes accordingly).
Indeed - the logic is it’s easier to change the script as they go than the director. Whether that’s a good idea or not is debatable, but it is the prevailing logic.
MGM is doing just fine. Over the past 9 months they have made a profit of $300 million on revenue of $800 million.
A change at CEO does not have to mean trouble, it could just mean the company’s investors want to go in a different direction then the current leadership does.
It also means though, as I saw speculated on TV today, that this could be a sign they want to sell the studio…
To be fair - although that is not so easy, since the powers that were at MGM in the past made a lot of questionable and not very successful decisions - of all the major studios currently only DISNEY can claim that they have a great plan that is working out for them.
Every other studio is struggling. Big franchises are the only meal ticket now, and even those are tricky to handle (as WB had to find out). Audiences stay at home watching streaming services. The middle budget film is mostly gone. Stars don’t open everything anymore. Home video sales dropped off, too.
In that climate, of course, Bond is the best asset one can have and bet on. Unfortunately, Bond without an actor who the audience responds to will also fail as history has proven. So it probably was essential to keep DC for one more film. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to keep him for BOND 26, too.
If MGM is indeed sold at some point, Bond will be its biggest bargaining chip. Which will result in a new studio hopefully being able to lay out a clear plan for the franchise and stop the uncertainty (for a few years at least). But it may also result in another long hiatus due to frustratingly long negotiations.
BOND 25 is maybe the only Bond film we actually have a chance to see in the foreseeable future.
After Bond 25, I don’t mind waiting, say, six years if we get a new studio and a film every two years from then on. It would be like getting all these stupid gaps over with at once.
The problem is, MGM will be of the opinion that Bond is the only thing keeping them afloat as of now, so Bond will have to be prised out of their cold, dead hands.