It was one of the most eagerly anticipated movies of all time, and No Time to Die finally hit theatres earlier this month. Actor Daniel Craig’s final James Bond movie has generated quite a bit of praise from the critics, with the likes of The Boston Globe saying “it’s clear who the best Bond is”.
The movie’s Rotten Tomatoes score stands at 84 %, while its score on Metacritic is 68, with reviews being generally favorable for the movie.
Also, its box office result after the film debuted in international markets couldn’t have been more encouraging for film company MGM. This is because No Time to Die beat expectations and managed to gross more than $100 million US dollars during its opening weekend worldwide as covered on GameSpot.
So logically expectations were sky-high for the film’s debut in the US. Would No Time to Die be able to beat Skyfall’s opening weekend and make more than $80 million US dollars during its first weekend in the US?
Sadly for producer MGM and Sony Pictures, though, No Time to Die’s opening weekend wasn’t as good as many were hoping, with the movie making a decent $56 million US dollars in the second weekend of October as was recently reported on Variety.
This falls short of what Skyfall made in 2012 during its opening weekend in the US ($80 million) and Spectre’s haul during its first weekend back in 2015 ($70 million).
Of course, the fact there’s a pandemic going on obviously had an impact on the movie’s domestic result – people have been reluctant to go back to theatres, especially those aged over 35 which comprise most of the potential audience for a James Bond film.
So there’s the possibility this may turn out to be a box office disappointment if it fails to bring in less than $800 million US dollars, this being the amount box office pundits are suggesting the movie would have to gross at the box office in order to be profitable for MGM and co-producer Eon as Variety points out.
This is certainly a wallop of cash, and comes close to what Spectre made during the time it was in cinemas back in 2015, but the thing is that No Time to Die was delayed several times before it finally hit theatres, something which must have cost MGM tens of millions of dollars as the movie sat gathering dust in a studio warehouse.
Also taking into account its massive $250 million US dollars production budget and the zillions spent on marketing and this clearly is a movie that needs to do really well at the box office in order to at least break even.
Right now, though, No Time to Die seems like it could still be a box office success rather than a failure. The film has made a whopping $454 million US dollars according to boxofficemojo.com at the time of writing, but this 25th James Bond still has a while to go before it can match Skyfall’s massive $1.1 billion haul, the 2012 film still being the top-grossing entry in the series thus far.
It seems that No Time to Die might even have a hard time raking in as much as 2015’s Spectre (which made about $880 million US dollars) given the ongoing pandemic, this being a longer movie than the earlier entries (limiting the number of showings per day), plus the fact many people, especially older moviegoers are still hesitant to return to the cinema, but this remains to be seen.
The film, though, is yet to open in China, something which could drive earnings higher as Bond is pretty popular in the land of the Great Wall. A strong showing in China prevented other movies such as Warcraft back in 2016 from being box office failures for instance.
Either way, it would be a good thing for 007 fans if Daniel Craig’s final outing as the iconic spy turned out to be a success despite everything, something we’ll know for sure when all is said and done and 2021 comes to a close.
Read more: James Bond No Time to Die delay could cost MGM up to $50 million
No Time to Die (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)