Your choice for Bond in Bond 23

[Kristatos]

Will we even need a new bond if we can digitally reuses Connery or Brosnan or Dalton?

I don't think that'll happen in the near future. Too expensive. Avatar was a gamble that paid off - it cost a whopping $300 million to make, but looks set to be the first film to gross $2 billion worldwide. I don't think Bond's backers could realistically expect to get that sort of return on their investment. If motion capture/CGI technology becomes more affordable then who knows? But will Sir Sean still be around do give his consent, and would he do it if he is?

[Mazer Rackham]

As much money as it is bringing in it almost does not matter what Avatar cost to make. Shocker I know because I always stress cost and ticket numbers vs current monitory record breaking but this is a rare 2 billion dollar exception.

Fox minimized their exposure with $280 + $150 to $180m for advertising and is being richly rewarded. I think it was something like 40% of total production not counting advertising, which Fox partially funneled the advertising dosh to themselves through their own shows and networks.
What Fox ponied up fro Avatar is the kind of money Sony spent on Quark for a considerably less substantial payout.

Even if Avatar cost $500m, tripling that in profits even if it sells fewer tickets than the last 1.8b movie sold and even considering the theaters owners take of the gross, it is a hell of deal any way they split it up.

[Kristatos]

Hey Mazer, do you know if there's an all-time worldwide box office chart adjusted for inflation anywhere? I can't find one online anywhere. Wikipedia used to have one, but took it down because they said it was meaningless due to the variable rates of currency conversion etc. over time. I'd still be curious to see it, to see how well Titanic and Avatar compare to older blockbusters like Gone With the Wind.

[Mazer Rackham]

It must be in the ethers, great minds think alike and all of that, I've been involved in several arguments this week over the best way to figure this out.

Obviously they way to do it is count actual tickets sold, estimations some like to use instead of hard data are complete crap because they go by ticket price averages. Which fluctuate wildly. Unfortunate studios do not like to tell everyone their business any more precisely than the voodoo economics they currently spout. It is rare to get the insight in to hard immutable numbers like tickets sold.

The page Wikpedia has a lot of good links http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hi ... sing_films

Also BFI has a great chart. http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/ultimate ... /index.php

Thinking of examples Thunderball is a good one to work with.
15.6 m tickets according to BFI

US tickets sold 74.8m
Overseas 91.2
166m total worldwide

Are the BIF numbers right and there were 75.6 tickets sold outside the Uk and US? it seems likely enough

Gone With the Wind sold over 200m tickets during its various theatrical runs(1947, 1954, 1961, 1967, 1971, 1989, and 1998) in the US, trying to figure out the various currencies worldwide is a bitch, nobody has a good answer aside form studios relinquishing their current counting scheme and going with ticket numbers. I hope the attention on Avatar record breaking brings us closer to that standard.

I was trying to come up with good way to adjust DAD closer to CR time frame, and the only quick idea we came up with is a substitution for the foreign markets they shared, like Japan, which likely remained the same per ticket sold. For a classic Like Gone with the Wind is hard to compensate it accurately enough.

FYI the breakdown on Avatar
-$1.147 billion from 3D
-$563 million from 2D
-$134 million from IMAX

[Kristatos]

I was trying to come up with good way to adjust DAD closer to CR time frame, and the only quick idea we came up with is a substitution for the foreign markets they shared, like Japan, which likely remained the same per ticket sold. For a classic Like Gone with the Wind is hard to compensate it accurately enough.

I believe I have posted this before, but here is a graph of estimated worldwide tickets sold for the Bond films, though it predates QOS. Bear in mind that the figure for LALD is very likely overestimated, due to a well-known statistical error that has been passed down through the ages, where someone reversed the meanings of "worldwide" and "international" giving the total as the result of the equation d+w=i instead of d+i=w, where d=domestic (US and Canada), i=international and w=worldwide box office totals.

[Mazer Rackham]

I am saving that graph. I have those numbers, although a little lower for CR. LALD lucked out by the circumstances of it times and how it is accounted for now.

What I was saying about DAD to CR was meant for a region to region comparison and more accurate inflation of the 2002 numbers.

I have 2 numbers on DAD and almost always used the lower figure, but with the Sony numbers DAD is about the equivalent of $589m movie today

[Kristatos]

I am saving that graph. I have those numbers, although a little lower for CR. LALD lucked out by the circumstances of it times and how it is accounted for now.

I suck at maths, but I think that since the domestic admissions (20.1 million) were double-counted, you need to subtract them from the given total (91.6 million) to get the real total. 71.5 million sounds like a more plausible figure - higher than DAF but still lower than TSWLM, the film that saved the franchise back in the '70s.

[katied]

It's interesting to see what movies are the lows on that chart!

[Omega]

I just read something about how GoldenEye lifted the sagging series and was the best since Moonraker, looking a the graph For Your Eyes only didn't do too bad. There are only 3 really weak movies in that time made by Eon.

[Kristatos]

I just read something about how GoldenEye lifted the sagging series and was the best since Moonraker, looking a the graph For Your Eyes only didn't do too bad.

It was a big drop from Moonraker though - some 15 million fewer tickets sold.

[Captain Nash]

I've often said that TMWTGG is rubbish.
And if that chart is to be believed, then I'm right.
Interesting to note and this isn't a Brozzer bash, but if you look at the films of Connery and Moore, they climb (mostly) at the begining of their Bond tenure, and drop off toward the end.
With Pierce he hits it out of the park with GE, but then they all drop off afterwards. In fairness to him though he does have the most consistant tenure it would seem.

[Kristatos]

With Pierce he hits it out of the park with GE, but then they all drop off afterwards. In fairness to him though he does have the most consistant tenure it would seem.

Not really, there's a drop-off after GE, but then the figures climb again, though not to GE levels.

[Captain Nash]

Exactly, he never reached the peak of his first film again. Sadly it was all downhill for Pierce.
Given better scripts and co-stars the Brosnan era could've and should've been so much better.

[katied]

Not really, there's a drop-off after GE, but then the figures climb again, though not to GE levels.

Even for DAD there isn't much of a drop off. That's a bit of a surprise!

[Blowfeld]

I've often said that TMWTGG is rubbish.
And if that chart is to be believed, then I'm right.
Interesting to note and this isn't a Brozzer bash, but if you look at the films of Connery and Moore, they climb (mostly) at the begining of their Bond tenure, and drop off toward the end.
With Pierce he hits it out of the park with GE, but then they all drop off afterwards. In fairness to him though he does have the most consistant tenure it would seem.

Sean Connery's drop after Thunderball is a shock. Moore's inflated first movie What is the story behind that, has anyone got the corrected numbers?

I wonder if the juggernaut movies Pierce's 007s were up against affected his numbers in the end. Titanic,Toy Story 2, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, looking back at the late 1990 there were lot of decent movies for they were up against, the completion now a days seem in comparison more moot and spread-out.

[katied]

NSNA was a remake before its time.

[Omega]

NSNA was a remake before its time.

Sad but true. You know it didn't do too bad for being an unofficial movie and the official movie didn't do that much better.

[katied]

Sad but true. You know it didn't do too bad for being an unofficial movie and the official movie didn't do that much better.

Yeah..what's up with that?

[Captain Nash]

As the Bond films seem to slowly drop off from FYEO - LTK, do you think director John Glen was a bad choice to direct five consecutive Bond films in a row?
I always think that John Glen was a good Bond director. But looking at that chart, his films were mostly in decline, one after the other.
Now at the time EON must've been aware of this. And in the driving seat at the time was Cubby.
I know alot of you here get the daggers out for Barbara, but was Cubby before her, not making some odd decisions in the hot seat?
As for the Dalton era, well he was an excellent Bond, but he just didn't get the all important nod from the general public. In the autobiography 'When the snow melts' Cubby mentions that he had to let Dalton go, because of the poor box office from TLD and LTK.
I'm glad we had the two Dalton films, but were there really no other actors at the time who could've played Bond?
I'm not sure if Pierce was the right choice to star in TLD, I find him a little to young and even more Americanised than in his later films around that time.
Another question would be, if the films start to drop off like they did in the late 80's, do you think that EON will try to revive the franchise, as they did with GE. Is a lengthy break the answer to getting Bond back? I realise that the delay from LTK - GE was due to legal issues, but it helped that Bond had been away from the public eye for 6 years. The world was ready for Bond again.
Could this work again do you think?

[Omega]

Was it John Glen or the self-aware direction direction the series took? I am thinking of the Lines like "you are THE James Bond" or whatever it was in A view to a kill, then the what was it? a carpet ride that was finally cut for Dalton's first movie. Was it that kind of thinking and writing that was the problem more than Dalton & Moore or the times?

6 year Gap might have helped when Pierces first movie came out but I think it was a better story than before and they got off the modern kick, by the modern kick I mean how they kind of drifted taking on the latest trend whatever it was like silicon Vally and forced inter racial situations.

Living daylights and License to kill were a lot of fun to watch although it was clear they were coping various popular influences like Miami vice.


I think in way the series is too self-aware again and is trying too hard not to do what they did before with Connery and Brosnan or when they do want to give a knowing nod to the past its all screwed up.Painful mimicking they did with Quantum and the Exxon Girl is a good example

I haven't watched all of the movies in this time 73-85 however I wonder if it wasn't the actors or directors that were at fault but the writers and producers cramming in any popular influence since star wars worked out for them?