It was expected from Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and then maybe from Wonder Woman in 1984, but in the end it probably didn’t work out for James Bond. For the past year and a half, filmmakers have been looking forward to a film that would become an event and draw hitherto hesitant viewers back to the halls. And the attendance figures of the latest Bond film No Time to Die in International Markets after the first weekend since its premiere suggest that it could be the first pandemic film megahit.
The twenty-fifth film with Agent 007 was to premiere in April 2020. It was postponed for a year and a half due to a pandemic, which was fundamentally marked by attendance. Either the halls were closed or the spectators were afraid and were limited by a number of measures. Producers and distributors did not want to release an expensive $ 250 million film to cinemas with uncertain attendance or to online platforms at the risk of not being reimbursed or missing out – and many viewers who buy a cinema ticket will see it illegally online.
Now, according to them, the right time has come – and the film It’s Not Time to Die, which concludes the era of Daniel Craig as James Bond, earned $ 119 million worldwide in the first weekend since its premiere. The distributor was more cautious in his estimates and would be satisfied with $ 90 million. Bond thus became the first film to be screened during the pandemic, surpassing the one hundred million dollar mark.
The important thing is that he succeeded without sales from China, where the film will have its premiere at the end of October. At the same time, Hollywood feature films have been largely dependent on China, the world’s most populous market, in recent years. Twice after US cinemas were closed for many months and Chinese sales could decide whether the film would succeed or fail.
Respect 40/2021: A man who ran out of time
Bond did best – unsurprisingly because it was originally an English cultural export – in the UK and Ireland. He made $ 25 million in cinemas, almost a quarter of total sales. Sales are doubly favorable, as they are currently at the level of sales of previous Specter ($ 123 million) and Skyfall ($ 109 million) bonds for the first weekend. In the Czech Republic, the film was seen by 126 thousand people over the weekend, thus removing the leader Zátopek (111 thousand viewers / weekend) and thus becoming the most visited film in Czech cinemas so far.
Delaying the premiere No time to die has become half the target of cynical jokes and half the litmus test of how cinemas and distributions stand in a pandemic, as distributors and producers think about the films they have ready to release. Whether they have confidence in cinemas or, conversely, they see the future in the hybrid introduction of cinema-online or simply on the Internet. Bond has also been speculated that producers have reportedly considered launching online. But they refuse, according to them Bond always aimed at the big screen.
The question, however, is whether this scenario would change without widespread vaccination, which is slowly returning things to normal. Apart from the vaccination, the fact that the distributor hit the mood well helped the spectator’s interest. Potential viewers were not yet annoyed by the eternal delays, on the contrary, they managed to gradually build and escalate expectations, mainly in connection with the fact that this is the last film by Daniel Craig and the end of an era. Which, combined with the Bond brand and the offer of other films in cinemas, has made Bond a worthwhile film for many spectators who go to the cinema once or twice a year.
Bond’s numbers confirm the slight optimism associated with the return of cinema-goers, which was underlined by $ 90 million in three-day sales in North American cinemas for the sequel to the comic book Venom 2: Carnage is coming. As early as mid-September, optimism was also expressed by Disney’s decision to release all of its films – including the animated Encanto and the remake of the musical West Side Story – by the end of the year, first in theaters and then on its Disney + platform. The move confirms, among other things, that one of the largest cinema entertainment companies continues to count as a key springboard for film life.
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