Heading into the weekend, there’s been plenty of talks that No Time to Die could be set to break Venom: Let There Be Carnage‘s record and become the first pandemic-era release to debut to at least $100 million, which would be another massive step in the right direction for the industry as a whole.
While we won’t get a better idea of whether that’s on the cards until tomorrow, the 25th installment in the long-running spy saga has already set a benchmark for the James Bond franchise. As per Deadline, Daniel Craig’s swansong as 007 brought in $6.3 million from Thursday previews, comfortably besting Spectre‘s $5.25 million.
MGM is very conservatively estimating $55-65 million for the three-day frame, but Sony did something similar for Let There Be Carnage and then saw the superhero sequel almost double the initial projections, but No Time to Die is catered to a slightly different and somewhat older crowd than those who turned out in their droves for Tom Hardy’s grandstanding dual turn as Eddie Brock and his symbiotic life partner.
The good news is that No Time to Die is at least guaranteed to come close to a global tally of $300 million by the end of play on Sunday, and a potentially lucrative run in Chinese theaters is still to come.