There was much Cassandra hand-wringing and industry exasperation last week as the latest battle in the war between movies and streaming services almost reached a point that many felt would signal the death of the big screen and the ascendancy of streaming as the new normal for film-watching.
More significantly, however, the whole messy business almost hammered the final nail in the coffin of one of cinema’s most successful, independently produced, longest-running, cross-generational sources of solid franchise satisfaction and globetrotting, over-the-top thrills and spills: Bond, James Bond.
As any dedicated follower of Bond news and fashion will know, the 007 franchise thrives on rumour and speculation, especially when it comes to which actor will next step into the Saville Row-tailored suit of its title character. But over the course of a weekend ago and running through last week the rumours coming out of the thumbs of Hollywood insiders were not about the future of the franchise’s hero, but rather its latest, as yet still unreleased, 25th instalment, the $250m (R3,9bn) Daniel Craig swansong, No Time to Die.
The film had its release delayed many times thanks to the uncertainty and restrictions that have resulted from the Covid-19 pandemic. Its latest planned release date of April next year is yet again under threat thanks to renewed fear about the impossibility of cinemas returning to some sort of normal with the northern hemisphere’s expected second wave of Covid infections.
When rumours began to circulate on Twitter and other social media that Bond 25 was the subject of a furious bidding war between streaming giant Netflix and rival service Apple TV, and that the numbers being thrown around for successful acquisition of the film were in the region of $600m (R9,5bn), industry observers and doomsday prophets warned that if a big-budget, tent-pole big-screen blockbuster franchise such as Bond was willing to sell itself for home viewing to the highest bidder then the rest of the big-screen blockbuster industry could pack up and go home.
