A new report claims that, due to the growing costs of No Time to Die, the movie now requires a box office return of $900 million just to break even.
movieweb.com
Breaking this down,
No Time to Die was last costed at 214 million pounds according to Companies House in the UK, with the amount having increased from 199.5 million pounds due to interest charges. Now, a year later, that has risen to around 226 million pounds, or $314 million, and once marketing costs have been added into the astronomically priced mix, that comes to around $464 million at the lower end, making that the rough figure
No Time to Die will need to make in order to be profitable.
However, where the $900 million
box office figure comes into play is due to the split between the cinematic exhibitor and the movie's distributors, with MGM likely expecting to take around 50 per cent of every dollar spent on cinema tickets worldwide, meaning the movie needs to make at least $928 million. And thus, the most expensive James Bond movie was born.
Sure,
007 adventures are usually extremely popular with audiences, with Daniel Craig's last two outings,
Skyfall and
Spectre, making $1 billion and $880 million respectively, but these are not normal times. For context,
Fast and Furious 9, which has been declared the biggest movie of the summer, has so far made $642 million since its release in June, whereas the previous installment broke a billion. No movie has come close to producing a figure as high as $900 million. Can James Bond do it?
No Time to Die has been
plagued with delays, with the movie initially supposed to hit theaters way back in November 2019. Thanks to a director change, an injury, and then a global halt,
No Time to Die has been met with rising costs, with the movie reportedly costing the studio $1 million a month in interest until the movie is released. There have also been reports of reshoots to replace now outdated product placement, with the studio even looking to sell
No Time to Die to a streaming service for an eye-watering $600 million. As expected, there were no takers.