There’s a whole lot more to a movie becoming profitable than simply deducting the budget from the box office gross, and sometimes a blockbuster can earn massive amounts of money from theaters, only to post surprisingly slim profits. Avengers: Endgame hauled in close to $2.8 billion, but the net profit was $900 million. That’s still a ton of cash, but nowhere near as high as you might have thought, with almost $2 billion heading outside of the Disney coffers.
The Daniel Craig era has yielded the highest commercial returns in the history of the James Bond franchise, but Spectre‘s $880 million was a steep drop from the $1.1 billion posted by Skyfall. No Time to Die is finally slated to hit theaters eighteen months behind schedule, but a new report from fan site MI6 HQ claims to have crunched the numbers and deduced that the 25th installment in the series needs to bring in at least $928 million just to break even.
As per the report, the budget has swelled to over $300 million, with advertising and promotional costs also facing an increase after part of the campaign had already launched early last year before the pandemic set in. Factor in MGM splitting the box office takings with theatrical distributors 50/50, and you’d need to double the $450 million ballpark that the studio and production company Eon have spent to see No Time to Die end up in the red.
That’s about as close to impossible as you can get during the pandemic era, and there’s even a line of thinking that No Time to Die could face one final delay into 2022, based on the belief that coinciding with Dr. No‘s 60th anniversary has the potential to drive ticket sales, after Skyfall posted record numbers on the landmark 50th.
