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The decision seemed drastic at the time.
So in March 2020, the producers ofNo Time to Diedecided it was no time to release a movie.
The concern keeping studio executives awake at night:Can you hold your way to a hit?
It has racked up a global cume of $454.8 million to date.
Since October 8,No Time to Diehas taken in a shade under $100 million in North America.
(The smaller Alamo Drafthouse chain entered andexited Chapter 11this year.)
Movies arent like autographed baseball cards, the executive adds.
Assets will technically depreciate over time.
You cant just put titles on ice for perpetuity.
But theyve lost so much money by movingNo Time to Die, the marketing has gotten stale.
Merchandising and consumer-product tie-ins have one of the longest lead times.
These deals are made for exclusive rights years in advance.
All the tie-ins were paid for but put on hold.
The result is a lot of inventory thats sitting, gathering dust.
Other costs of holding a blockbuster are less easily quantified.
There is the time value of money.
You have to compromise in terms of the upside, the lawyer adds.
Its going straight to SVOD.
So youre losing that revenue.
The HBO Max fiasco in particular strained talent relationships and made things financially complicated for Warner Bros.
In the unregulated world of post-pandemic, streaming-era profit participation, its difficult to know how to proceed.
Then theres the litigation.
Disney denied any wrongdoing.
Even before the studio would talk about it, says one executive.
That means an agency doesnt see their 10 percent of that.
And they have operating expenses they need to cover.
He points to the plight of Tom Hanks.
But now two of them, the Apple TV+ sci-fi dramedyFinchand Baz LuhrmannsElvis, have been rescheduled.
You cant just dump a movie every other month for six months from the same actor.
So theyre trying to be like, Hey, sell it to a streamer.
Youll make a profit.
People dont know who the person is, the lawyer continues.
Hey, thats a good young actor.
And everyone can say, Oh, theyre in that movie.
But they didnt get that pop, right?
Typically, theres goodwill from the movie getting made.
You dont have the movie out, so you dont get the goodwill.
Its more than just money.
You just lost that recognition.
That is in part due to the hybrid-release pattern of several of Q4s biggest impending blockbusters.
Director Denis Villeneuves lush sci-fi epicDunearrives in North American theaters and on HBO Max October 22.
Such a gridlock is already managing to disrupt the simpatico relationship between producers and studio executives.
The interest of the studio and the producer-financier are out of alignment, the financier says.
What do we want out of our movie?
Do we just want to get it off the shelf so that it doesnt interfere withSpider-ManandDune?
Or do we want to maximize the value of each individual title?
As a producer-financier, youre like,I want every penny.
If youre the studio, youre like,I got the whole slate to look out for.
Spectredid about $85 million in China six years ago.
The two of them together could push it closer and closer to the $800 million mark.
Compare that withBlack Widow,which cost more than $200 million to produce.
Conventional industry wisdom holds a films break-even point to be its production budget times two.
That meansBlack Widowhad a $400 million benchmark to meetbeforetaking into account Disneys multiple promotional spends due to rescheduling.
In all likelihood, it barely crossed the threshold of profitability, if you believe Disneys numbers.
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