I remember when those resources were going to make an incredible Lord of the Rings show. That turned into a very expensive turd.
You are correct. It was very expensive and it was not very good.
The difference though is 'rights.'
In that LOTR show they had to dance around 'rights.' My understanding about this Bond...whatever it is, they havent announced if its a show or movies or what, but is that they bought ALL the rights.
There are some very talented writers out there that could come up with some really great ideas. I guess we'll see.
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Don't care to see a billion dollars worth of visual extravaganzas only to have a script as complex as the horse head on that horse drawing meme.
Things have gotten so big with these franchises that I think the appetite has shifted to a stripped down version that's carried by strong writing.
There were rumours that they were at least strongly considering rebooting Bond set back in the 50s/60s (when the books were written), probably not black & white though.
In the current climate could a retro Bond even work? You think Amazon is going to make a Bond series where Russia is the antagonist? All it would take is one tweet from the orange goblin to make Bezos cave.
ZERO chance that this isnt a massive, mass market disappointment ala Star Wars, Dr Who, Star Trek, LOTR, etc, etc that we have seen the modern entertainment slop machine try to "remake" over the past decade.
Like the others mentioned, Bond will be a dead property doing 25% of the numbers and attention it used to do by 2030.
Bond is a bit of a weird one by those standards though. It's never been a true "mega franchise" -- Skyfall is the biggest hit at the box office but it's an outlier by far. It's never had a successful television show or spinoffs, and never a high level of critical acclaim or accolades (awards, etc.). One super hit video game from 30 years ago and a handful of other moderately successful ones.
So you're really buying in to a moderately successful (to various degrees) spy / action movie franchise largely appealing only to older white men with 1 theatrical film every 3-5 years. Not sure how someone looks at that and decides to try to "cinematic/TV-universe-ify" it, but executives are dumb.
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Some friends and film critics recently started a Bond pod and they had an emergency episode last week on the news, which they talk about with guest Phil Noble Jr who is the EiC of Fangoria.
I mean the spy thriller premise has to have general appeal to have sustained intergenerational demand to last 25 films or whatever it is over 60 years.
Not sure the demographic is just older white people, otherwise it should've died off long ago.
Young people seem to like the Kingsmen franchise which is an inferior spy franchise.
People will probably flock to it until there's more content put out than there is a demand for.
The 3-5 years between movies has always worked in its favor in that way.
There are many licensed Bond books out there; pick a good one that builds on some era.
Casino Royale was so effective because Daniel Craig was vulnerable, and not some invisible car driving indestructible super hero.
They should pick a gap in the timeline, and do a story there. No super computers, no satellites with death rays, just a great character development story. Cold War? Revolutions? There’s lots of events to draw from.
But bigger budgets and crazy over the top events in a movie probably won’t keep the franchise going.
Bond as a character can be flawed as a person; he has a license to kill after all.
Eva Green was a huge vulnerability for Bond. More of that!
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There are plenty of 007 complete waste of time duds.
Outside of MI:2, the rest of that series is certainly serviceable spy thrillers of varying degrees.
I just have a hard time giving 007 series the edge given some of the slop we were served. Die Another Day, World is Not Enough, Octopussy, Man with Golden Gun are just absolute junk. And there's more.
I think the 007 duds outnumber the ones that work.
"Spy movies" are tricky these days, and I think there's only so long you can go back to the Cold War. You need bad guys like SPECTRE or The Syndicate in a world where cold wars aren't against nation states. And even if you want to make nation states the bad guys - who do you choose to alienate? Don't want to lose that box office from China. Don't want to villainize Russia and upset the media tycoon oligarchs. You could always go the middle Eastern terrorist route and risk bad publicity that may or may not drag the box office down much.
