I think so. Especially whenever Bond 26 gets the green light.
The curiosity factor of a new Bond’s debut, ala GE and CR, always supercharges the franchise. I’m hopeful they’d rise to the occasion as they have done in the past.
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How long, in reality, could this movie sit gathering dust on a shelf before somebody has to make a decision on what course of direction to take? An analyst said earlier this week that cinemas in the United States might not open until mid-2021 at the earliest, and in all likelihood even later than that. By which time cinema chains might cease to exist. You think AMC and Regal are going to be around by then? Then the dominos start falling. Studios still rely on theatrical box office as their bread and butter. Loans need repaying. Studios go bye bye.
It can’t stay locked up forever. Nobody knows how long this pandemic is going to last. 70,000+ new cases a day in the United States. This isn’t ending anytime soon. No point saying let’s not reopen until there’s a vaccine. We might never get a vaccine.
Saturday morning rant. I apologise.
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First and foremost: people have to start getting out of their bubble and realise that the pandemic isn’t beaten until it’s beaten everywhere. What good is lifting restrictions when the virus flares up again from other regions or countries?
We keep musing about ‘going back to some semblance of normal’ as some guy put it yesterday. Because we are used to things like Ebola and bird flu happening far away from our homes. But actually we’ve only been incredibly lucky these last few decades and a pandemic like COVID-19 has been overdue.
We have to react to such challenges internationally and coordinately. Weakening international surveillance and response is actively threatening all our lives. On a global scale. And won’t even profit those that try to put themselves first.
Only when we start acting together is there a viable chance to see an end to this crisis.
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Yup.
(These words added only to make up the required number of characters in a post)
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I was referring more to the casual fans who were the ones to help push Skyfall over $1 billion. The interest in Bond fans will never wane, but those who aren’t may not be as great the longer the delay goes.
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Definitely. Audiences need to be sustained, which is why it must come out sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, the five year gap has already put the series at a disadvantage. Fortunately, it’s iconic - largely because they came out at such a nip in the '60s and '70s (it would’ve finished long ago had From Russia WIth Love been released in 1967, for example, and Goldfinger in 1972).
Bond would only ever be endangered by a copyright dispute which could block such films from being released, or a situation like we have now, in which cinemas are closed or threatened with closure. As such, the character could easily go the way of Sexton Blake - and he ran far longer than Bond.
Since we’ve had that Tenet announcement… it seems like it’s about to pull the trigger on a staggered release, going international first and then the U.S., which is what a lot of international exhibitors have been crying out for.
I have a feeling that once it does, it opens the door for films like NTTD to do the same. In Europe and the UK in particular, it was probably the most important release of the year. Universal will be under pressure to keep November, and if Tenet sets the precedent to not go day and date globally but stagger with America going last, we could see that happen here - November elsewhere, 2021 TBC in the U.S…
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Depending how things are going until then in Europe - it’s far from over here, we’ll have to see how the restarted holidaying and school in autumn influences the spreading. It’s not a given Europe will be an unproblematic market and there could well be local lockdowns that eat into revenue again.
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I really wouldn’t bank on seeing the film this year. A staggered release would likely mean the film releases on blu-Ray before it ever released theatrically in the states, negating any reason for a theatrical release here. I can’t see the film releasing in November, then being delayed to summer or even late fall 2021 in the US without the film coming to home media before then. I’m fully expecting a delay soon to either summer 2021 or a full year to November 2021.
I wouldn’t bank on seeing any major release in theaters this year. Any films we get will be released by other means, unless there’s a sudden embrace of drive-ins.
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That’s the debate Tenet is facing - and while what appear to be the current plans are a stagger that’s literally on par with No Time To Die (international markets get it 1 or 2 weeks before in late Aug, US in early Sept), I’d imagine if it’s a more substantial gap they’ll just hold off of any international home entertainment release at least until it opens in the US. Holdbacks like this happen plenty on the independent site.
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Wow, studios can´t outbid streamers anymore… wonder whether that has to do with, well, you know, distribution channels?
Acquisition was still in the $100m range, worth noting.
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The crucial difference, maybe the one that’s going to change the industry for good, is that the streamers are running on a subscription model: they are making a modest profit each time their fee is billed on my bank account. A fee so modest I don’t even bother to cancel my ticket if I don’t get to watch one month - as doubtless many will do. A fee that doesn’t even bother with freeloaders; Netflix doesn’t care how many people watch their stuff. And Amazon’s Prime model even started as a way to get free and faster delivery - the streaming content came on top and it was years before I first watched something from there.
The studios on the other hand only get my money when I actually choose to watch their products, which is increasingly rarer these days. They have to finance their productions first and gamble that they make back the money on a chain of valorisation with diminishing returns on the latter stages. People who can wait a time to see a particular film earn the studio much less.
The streamers have one other major advantage over the studio system: they control their own distribution channel. Which doesn’t even require major infrastructure. All they need is a number of giant sized servers and sufficient broadband capacity and they are in business. The broadband channels are a necessity in any country wanting to play in the 21st century anyway. So neither Apple nor Netflix nor any other streamer needs real estate in city centres to show their stuff - to the contrary, you can consume it wherever you go on your smart phone.
So there, that’s the competition the studios are up against.
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If I can add one more anecdotal piece of evidence: when I ask my husband if he wants to go to a particular movie, he often says that he would rather wait until he can stream it, since he is not sure he wants to pay for something that he might not enjoy. My husband is a Millennial.
I am a late Boomer–Generation Jones–and it would never occur to me to wait to see a movie streamed. The proper way to see a movie is on a screen, and if it is a bomb–so what? It will not have been my first, and certainly not my last. Screens are ubiquitous in people’s lives now, and people are more and more comfortable with movies delivered on whatever screen happens to be convenient.
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The steep hike in prices, particularly in the last ten years ago, has somewhat helped with the attitude that you should only go see a film in the cinema if you KNOW you’ll enjoy it.
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I would still love to see movies on a big screen - but there are mostly multiplexes now in the next big town near to my apartment. And they hardly show anything but the big wannabe-blockbusters.
Also, it takes me about 45 minutes to drive to those cinemas. So I really have to weigh the pros and cons of taking a chance on a movie these days. When I was at the university in the 90´s I could just hop on my bike and had a chance of 10 theaters in the town I lived in, and they all showed everything I would love to see.
Well.
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Perhaps, eventually, when cinema re-emerges it will be small and local led
And there’s another advantage for the streamers: while studios and cinemas currently earn next to nothing, the streamers’ business goes on and better than ever because they earn a good share of what in normal times, the cinemas and the studios would. And this is going to continue as long as the pandemic isn’t under control (and it is far from that). The streamers just have to sit and wait, time is on their side. And the money they’re willing to pay for the rights to stream a blockbuster gets less and less, as they know that the day will come when studios and investors lose their nerves and accept any offers in order not to lose everything.
As for the NTTD release date, I see another problem coming up: in regular times, the traditional Bond starting date in mid-November is perfect. The movie can make good money for several weeks and then some during the holiday sesaon before it’ll fade away from cinemas, about ten weeks, maybe twelve. And after just another few weeks, the business with streaming, BDs and DVDs starts.
But people will want to celebrate Christmas at home with family and friends. Two or three weeks before Christmas, people are going to realize that if they catch the virus now, this won’t be possible as they’re going to be in quarantine or already seriously ill, maybe even in hospital, fighting death.
Even if cinemas are back to normal by then (which I doubt) people are going to avoid big events like cinema visits literally like the plague because everyone wants their Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year.
So, NTTD is going to have maybe four or five weeks to earn a big share of that billion bucks - with cinemas probably running at half capacity, followed by a holiday season that could turn out to be a general disaster for the trade, and after that, maybe another six weeks in which they also won’t make as much money as they’d love to.
But we already knew that about a year ago: the movie is dooomed… 
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I was spoiled by living close to or in New York City for all of my life. Once I was in college, it was nothing for me to hop a bus after classes to see movies in the city and then come home. After graduating, first priority was moving to NYC, where I have ended up living in the same neighborhood for almost forty years (two apartments within two blocks of each other–one for seven years, the other for 30 years).
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