Recently, in a report, MGM reveals that the production has taken loans to create No Time To Die, and it has to pay $1 million interest every month.
No Time to Die is an upcoming spy movie and the twenty-fifth installment of the James Bond franchise. The film is produced by Eon Productions and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. Rami Malek, Lea Seydoux, Daniel Craig, Lashana Lynch, Jeffrey Wright, Ralph Fiennes, and Christoph Waltz are the cast of the movie.
The film production started in 2016, and it will be the first project in the franchise distributed by Universal Pictures. Initially, Danny Boyle was attached to the project to co-write and direct the screenplay with writer John Hodge. However, the two left the project due to creative disagreement in August 2018. Later, Fukunaga took the place of Boyle’s. The shooting of the movie started from April 2019 to October 2019 under the working title Bond 25.
The film was scheduled to release in April 2020, but the plan was postponed twice due to the ongoing pandemic COVID-19. The team has now planned to release the film on 2 April 2021. The movie will tie the loose threads from the previous five Bond franchises, which began with the 2006 movie Casino Royale.
The film’s plot starts from five years after Ernst Stavro Blofeld got arrested and James Bond left the service. Later Felix Leiter, a CIA officer and Bond’s friend, approaches him to help them out to search a missing scientist, Valdo Obruchev. When it becomes clear that Obruchev is kidnapped, Bond confronts a criminal responsible for the deaths of millions.
Recently, in an interview, the production team shares that the film’s total production cost is over $250 million. And the continuous delays in the releasing date costs more expense for MGM. Now the studio is trying to sell the movie No Time To Die to the streaming platforms like Netflix in the region of $600 million.
MGM is very desperate to sell the film to pay the interest of the loan. THR shares that the studio has to pay an interest of $1 million every month in the interest charge. It has taken a huge loan for the production, and with every delay in the release date, the interest is increasing, which would not be able to pay off until the film is released. The CEO of Vogel Capital Research, Hal Vogel, reports that “MGM is suffering,” and the loan repayment was one of the main reasons the production is exploring the option of streaming sale. He adds that the major distributors have piles of upcoming expensive projects, and the pile is growing daily. Hence the studio is sitting on the investment with no certain return, and the interest rates are piling up.
However, MGM is not alone suffering from the financial crisis; Warner Bros. also has faced a significant loss by releasing one of the most expensive Christopher Nolan’s movies, Tenet, in theatres in September. The film failed at the box office and did not even break even the production cost. Disney also released Soul and Mulan on Disney+ other than in theatres. Although MGM has a problem, it has to sell the film No Time To Die at a high price tag to earn something out of it.
According to Deadline’s report, the studio has postponed the release date to make sure of better financial success. The rescheduling will ensure that the movie could release in countries like South Korea, China, Italy, France, and Japan, where the theatres are still closed.
The studio does not want to take the risk of releasing the films in theatres as audiences are not willing to come to the cinema halls; instead, they would choose to watch it indoors. The long-running blockbuster franchise Bond is battling for its release at the box office then it is not safe for any other studio. The survival of cinema theatres is another question; the pandemic has shaken the film business completely.
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