For almost 60 years now, James Bond has developed the reputation to be more of a “shoot first, ask questions later” kind of agent, a style that’s perhaps at odds with MGM’s careful management of No Time to Die, as they continue to leverage 007’s 25th installment until April 2021, one full year after its initially planned premiere date.

According to previous reports, the studio’s final decision to delay No Time to Die for so long came after failing to reach a deal with any of the streaming platforms that inquired about a potential licensing deal, with Apple TV only offering up to $400m for the exclusive rights. However big that amount may sound, it felt quite short of the $600m minimum rumored to be floating around MGM executives’ minds, a figure that does not seem far-fetched at all considering the kind of impact 007 tends to have at the box office

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Now, as The Hollywood Reporter reports, more information has surfaced to explain why MGM is choosing to skip streaming. First up there's No Time to Die’s $250m production cost, $50m spent on marketing for the delayed releases and generous bonuses signed by the movie’s stars. On top of that, there’s also the accruing interest on the unpaid loans that MGM took to finance the film, at a rate of $1m per month.

007 Daniel Craig confused

Even if that last part “only” adds around $12m by the time Bond is finally in movie theaters, No Time to Die would be rounding off a total production cost on the low to mid range north of $300m. All these factors certainly make it an easy decision to delay the film, considering MGM had a box office target of at least 1$ billion for 007.

With Skyfall bringing in $1.1b in 2012 and Spectre falling just short of that with $880.7m in 2015, MGM was right to have high expectations for 007 and it makes it obvious they were never going to take a sub-par deal after already taking in the biggest losses that pandemic could throw at them.

No Time to Die is set to release in April 2021.

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Source: The Hollywood Reporter