NO TIME TO DIE [Bond 25] - SPOILER Talk

[mkaroly]

Well, that's a way to kill the Bond franchise...never release it!

[Paul MacLean]

I feel terrible for the theater owners.

Yeah, they are a real victims in all this.

Audiences are ultimately no more than inconvenienced, while content providers can always dump their product into streaming services, but the cinema proprietors are getting left out in the cold.

I wonder if they can survive through this difficult season.

[Monterey Jack]

All these studios "protecting their investments" by endlessly delaying their most expansive franchise products are gonna be BAFFLED when they try to release them well into 2021 and find out that the delivery system for their films that has stood for over a century has been irreparably damaged. The least the could do is open their back catalogues and all theaters to show anything they want while trying to keep afloat instead of the thousandth retro screenings of Jurassic Park and The Goonies.

[AndyDursin]

That's not going to help. If there's no new product, it's not going to be worth it to stay open. Selling discounted tickets to old movies that a few people might go to isn't going to cut it.

[Paul MacLean]

That's not going to help. If there's no new product, it's not going to be worth it to stay open. Selling discounted tickets to old movies that a few people might go to isn't going to cut it.

When I was younger, a cinema opened in my town which specialized as a revival theater, showing older films. I thought it was great, but I don't think it was very profitable for the owners to show movies which people could just as easily get at the video rental place.

Eventually they changed their business model and it became a first-run "art house" cinema.

[AndyDursin]

It certainly was a whole different world back then because of how we all digested films. Revival theaters, bargain theaters, art house theaters, there was a lot of variety in most areas. But things have definitely changed towards big chains and big studio fare. And if it's not some big tentpole movie, you are not making a lot of money, nor do you have a lot of screens at your disposal to do so.

Complicating it all is people today don't even need a video store, they can access movies on their remotes or phones with a couple of presses. For smaller movies that's where your money is coming from now, not art houses, which I don't think even exist to the same degree as they did 20, 30 years ago.

[AndyDursin]

This is a good article on a real problem for any of these movies sitting on the COVID shelf: that they lay there so long they lose their buzz and commercial potential. Especially here, because the promotion for the Bond movie has already been done...it feels like the movie opened already.

[Paul MacLean]

Apparently, re-shoots are now on the slate, as the film is rapidly losing currency...

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/1 ... ent-deals/

I predict this will be the least-successful Bond film in history -- and it will serve them right for trying to ruin the character (and dumbing it down with Zimmer music and other trendy gimmicks).

[Eric W.]

It doesn't bode well at all.

[Monterey Jack]

This is a good article on a real problem for any of these movies sitting on the COVID shelf: that they lay there so long they lose their buzz and commercial potential. Especially here, because the promotion for the Bond movie has already been done...it feels like the movie opened already.

Movie studios should just face the hard fact that any $200 million tentpole movie they had in the can before Covid hit is doomed to lose money. A year from now, MAYBE, when the vaccine has been given to enough people to reach that fabled "herd immunity", we can start getting back to safely releasing big movies in 4,000-screen rollouts across America. Like Andy said, most of the big movies scheduled for release in early-to-mid 2020 already blew their wads when it came to advertising (I remember all of the junk food promos for WW84, Trolls 2 and even A Quiet Place Part II at work, all confidently announcing that said films were "Only In Theaters!"), so to double or even triple down on ad campaigns to sell release dates that are in a state of constant flux is just throwing good money after bad. Movies like No Time To Die, Black Widow and the like should follow the precedent set by WB and their 2021 release pattern of releasing their big films simultaneously on HBO Go and in whatever theaters happen to be open (which will hopefully be more and more as the virus recedes throughout the course of the year). They won't get the billion-and-a-half worldwide return on their investments they would have pre-Covid, but the only recourse is to hold onto these films for ANOTHER year, or two (or three), at which point even the most hardcore of these franchise fans simply won't care. I've been seeing (well, hearing, as I keep my eyes shut during the trailers when at the movies) the trailers for Quiet Place Part II and Black Widow for what seems at this point about a year-and-a-half, and it's become actively annoying. It's like Lucy constantly yanking the football away from Charlie Brown. Just dump these movies On Demand or whatever streaming service the studios own, press a bunch of Blu-Ray/4K discs for just a few months later, and accept the losses.

[Paul MacLean]

Daniel Craig at the Premiere for No Time To Die.

[Paul MacLean]

Glad I bought the Blu-ray set!

https://mrraaja.com/netflix-removing-ja ... e-release/

[Monterey Jack]

^ This is why physical media will always trump streaming.

[AndyDursin]

No reason to push the panic button, it's just a package of 2 Bond movies leaving Netflix per a contractual agreement that was probably made months or possibly years ago. Doesn't have to do with MGM's sale to Amazon.

I still have the Blu-rays for Bond but I bought the 4K streams and frankly they're all better than the Blu-Rays. Several of them are night-and-day better. Superior compression (some of the "frozen grain" on DR.NO and a few others is downright bad on Blu-Ray) and a different transfer altogether on a couple of them like GOLDENEYE. Highly recommended when the package goes on sale, which it has for $99 around Thanksgiving/Christmas at Itunes and Vudu (note MGM isn't anchored to Movies Anywhere so your purchase of them is limited to the service you make the purchase from).

I hope they make it onto 4K UHD, but it needs to happen soon. I still use the Blu-Rays for special features but this is a case where the 4K streams -- even minus HDR -- are superior.

[Monterey Jack]

Movie studios should just face the hard fact that any $200 million tentpole movie they had in the can before Covid hit is doomed to lose money. Black Widow and the like should follow the precedent set by WB and their 2021 release pattern of releasing their big films simultaneously on HBO Go and in whatever theaters happen to be open (which will hopefully be more and more as the virus recedes throughout the course of the year).

I can't believe I wrote this.