Absolute tosh. It won’t be delayed now, the marketing is full steam-ahead, everything has been arranged. How much more money can they afford to lose pushing and pushing the release date?? The film isn’t going to do well financially whether it’s released in 4 weeks or 14 months.
4 Likes
I was certain this was our time. Now I’m thinking it’ll be delayed again. Four weeks is a heller long time in pandemic time.
I believe TOP GUN 2 was not delayed due to the pandemic but Afghanistan. And JACKASS part whatever moved because they know they have a stinker on their hands and want to sell it to a streamer.
As for NTTD - I would not be surprised if they delayed once more. But it would be a total desaster with all that PR restarting and the product placement spots rushing out now. It really would make the start of NTTD a huge joke whenever they tried to restart it next year. It will become the movie which never gets a release, and sooner rather than later people will not care anymore. It is already past its prime and it drags Bond with it.
Just get it over with.
3 Likes
They’ve just released the final international and US trailers with release dates baked in. They’ve booked in dates for premieres. They’ve announced tickets are going on sale 13 September. They’ve made all these decisions knowing full well that the pandemic is still ongoing. The virus isn’t suddenly disappearing in the next three weeks. If they pull the plug now…
They will have made money from it already by selling television and merchandising rights; it’s a corporate entity with a motion picture somewhere attached to it so they might as well bung it out there. With Bond, as one suspects with the major franchises, the box office is only an element of the film’s success (if still the most immediately visible). Doubtless someone’s written some of it off for a huge tax loss anyway.
An accounting exercise with a theme song and explosions.
Appreciating they wouldn’t want it blamed for a spike in Covid rates if people go to cinemas to see it. I won’t be. Shall contemplate the 200-odd pages of spoilers Ian Fleming had the temerity to publish in advance of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and wait for home release.
(I probably wasn’t going to see it at the cinema anyway because cinemas are awful places, replete with scutters and unidentifiable stickiness).
7 Likes
Has the cinema experience ever been so eloquently summarised? All I can add is that strange and somewhat unsettling odour that greets on entry to the auditorium.
2 Likes
You folks must go to some slums of cinemas. 
3 Likes
If every other tentpole movie has now disappeared over the horizon, would this not leave NTTD the freedom to languish in cinemas for five+ months for a very gradual rise to profits?
The opening weekend would then not be too required an estimate of eventual revenues, I would submit.
7 Likes
Another reason why they should stick with this date. And the cinema owners would be eternally grateful.
Actually, when I grew up some Bond film was always playing in a cinema near my hometown. And they drew audiences. Just put NTTD into cinemas now and play it until it has turned a profit.
5 Likes
To be fair, I get that at home too. Or the family say they do. I have not noticed it.
6 Likes
This isn’t a bad idea. Just keep the film playing perpetually until it runs its course. When markets allow for it, people will filter in to watch it. It will be a slow earner, but it’ll earn regardless. I’m sure cinemas will gladly keep NTTD floating on their screens for as long as possible.
5 Likes
I think a lot of the odor in a cinema comes from food, which is prepared, consumed, inevitably spilled and occasionally regurgitated on site. I don’t mean just popcorn (though that can smell awful enough over time) but also pizza, chicken wings, you name it. Americans lack the discipline to sit a whole two hours doing anything without feeding their faces, and unlike in an open air stadium where they can eat all manner of artery-clogging indulgences and the detritus can later be swept or hosed away without a residual stench, theaters are enclosed spaces with (cheap) carpeting. Eventually they’re going to stink, and all the Lysol in the world just piles on to the bouquet rather than erasing it.
I remember a similar issue in a grocery store of my youth. Some genius decided to appeal to shoppers with an “upscale” atmosphere that included carpeting in many areas. Except shoppers and shelvers will still drop things, so in no time the carpet was unsightly, and when you walked in the front door, the first thing that hit you was the odor of meats and seafood from today, last week and five years ago.
3 Likes
We are out 27 days until release. 27 days is where we were when it was cancelled back in March 2020.
1 Like
I’m not reading anything about Top Gun not being released due to Afghanistan. Did you see that somewhere?
3 Likes
I hope if anything positive comes of all this, it’ll be the end of the era of hugely budgeted “spectaculars” that leave the mind five minutes after we’ve left the cinema. That and the obsessive focus from studio to press to casual viewer on “did it beat the competition” rather than “was it any good?”
On the subject of extended runs: I loved it when a film could stay in town as long as it sold tickets. I have fond memories of seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark in the summer and again a few times until the Christmas season.
But I thought the problem today is that deals are made ahead of time for home release, streaming, etc and hard dates are attached to those, so what pulled films from cinemas wasn’t so much diminishing returns as contractual obligations? I confess I don’t know if I read that or “deduced” it, and if it was the latter I’m probably wrong.
4 Likes
No, I believe that this is the real reason. The official one is the pandemic.
But how would a film which makes the military a fun situation play now?
1 Like
The Mission Impossible films then obviously have to move with it; they don’t want to have MI:7 and Top Gun overlap and be their own competition.
1 Like
Anyone want to take a wild guess which was the only one not to do a day/date simultaneous streaming option?
2 Likes
Highly unrealistic expectations?
We can’t beat the number Endgame, Avatar and Titanic got! Let’s just pack it all in.
Seems a bit like if every competitor at the olympics just stopped running because they couldn’t beat the land speed record.
I’d also point out 2019 was an aberration. It’s fourth biggest movie was the most successful film that studio ever made.