CUT TO:
INT. COVIDFinger’s lab.
Strapped to the table, James Bond watches nervously as the COVID laser moves ever closer to him.
BOND
You expect me to redate?
COVIDFINGER
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.
And now the cannons of the release calendar turn to 007 and to MGM.
It certainly doesn’t help matters that the new film is entitled No Time to Die. Not perhaps the ideal title to splash across the buses of a planet looking forget the specter of mass death looming around us. Somewhere at MGM, someone must be wondering if it’s too late to switch to Quantum of Solace 2.
One could forgive MGM if they took that as a sign from the heavens that this just is not meant to be right now.
Still, perhaps, the puckish defiance will capture the mood of a public looking to play a super spy, fighting back against COVID gloom, however foolhardy that may or may not be.
Either way it’s an awfully big bet for an independent studio with almost no cash flow right now, and a bet they’re going to have to make momentarily.
The problem is that, especially in a non-diversified company, the film’s box office take is almost an afterthought to the machinery you have to make the entire project work. Partners Omega and Heineken have already begun their Bond campaigns —campaigns that they’ve spent an actual bazillion dollars on—and spends that the studio needs to build awareness for the release. If the film is pulled now, Heineken’s not going to just rerun its campaign in a year.
Then, when you look at audiences and who is going to brave the health risks to go to the multiplex, the Bond audience isn’t exactly the youngest, spryest moviegoing public around. To attempt to drag their demos into the 21st century, these releases rely on the song by contemporary artists to bring them to the young folk out there. But the Billie Eilish wad was already shot seven months ago, at what was supposed to have been the campaign kickoff.
For MGM, with no subscription service (well, technically, it owns Epix, which does offer on-demand service, but like I said), there’s almost no money coming in the door through any other sources beyond, presumably, Kevin Ulrich’s pocket. Its releases are all sold off in output deals. The honey in the pot of those deals is that the various services will get a Bond film as part of the package. If this is pushed off another year or two, what does it do to those deals?
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