After last weekend’s disastrous results, James Bond saved the day at the box office, opening to $73 million for the second biggest Bond debut of all time. It cost an estimated $250 million to produce the film, bringing back the Skyfall team of Daniel Craig and director Sam Mendes. “The competition was different, the weekend was different”, said Rory Bruer, Sony’s president of worldwide distribution. The movie rights to the James Bond films are controlled by MGM and production company Danjaq LLC, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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Trade experts believe that with no major releases till November 20, Spectre is expected to continue making waves at the box-office. The combination of Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks and period setting has been too good to pass up, unlike Sandra Bullock’s Our Brand Is Crisis, which has only brought in $6 million in two weeks (vs. $54.9 million for Spies). The previous film in the long-running franchise bowed to $88.4 million, but had better reviews and benefited from being the only new wide-release in its opening weekend.
With Fox, it’s space drama The Martian bowed October 2nd and has been holding on strong ever since and winning the box office four out of its five weeks in release. Industry analysts project the film could eventually reach the $1-billion mark globally, following in “Skyfall’s” footsteps, whose $200-million price tag pales in comparison to the $1.1-billion it has raked in to date worldwide. With a budget between $245-300 million, it is one of the most expensive films ever made.
This weekend it followed up its record-breaking opening in the United Kingdom last week by outperforming Skyfall’s opening in Mexico ($4.5m), Brazil ($2.9m), Russian Federation ($5.8m), Belgium ($2.4m), Austria ($2.6m), Hong Kong ($2.4m), Malaysia ($2.3m), Poland ($3.1m) and more. The big-screen retelling of Charles M. Schulz’s classic comic strip earned a stellar A CinemaScore, and Peanuts’ big debut may have eaten into Spectre’s audience.
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Matt Damon and The Martian continued to excel with $9.3 million and third place in the movie’s sixth weekend. It kicks off the holiday movie season that will be punctuated with big franchises like “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2” later this month and Disney’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in December. But Spotlight had the better per-screen average with $60,455 as it made $302k overall.
