THE HOBBIT NEARS $500 MILLION OVERSEAS

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey took an expected journey to the top of the overseas box office over the weekend; what was unexpected was the profitability of the journey, now in its third week. The film dipped just 12 percent from a week ago in those markets where it was playing last week, and it […]

IT’S OFFICIAL: SKYFALL SETS BOND RECORD

While all eyes were focused on The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2 to see whether it would break box-office records (it didn’t; see separate item), Skyfall, the 23rd James Bond blockbuster, was continuing to rack up huge profits overseas, where, in its fourth week, it grossed an additional $49.6 million to bring its […]

WINDFALL FOR SKYFALL: $88.4 MILLION (updated)

Daniel Craig, who remarked after learning that he had been selected to play James Bond in 2005 that he recognized that the franchise is a machine that “makes a lot of money,” has made the machine the most money for a Bond opening ever — an estimated $87.8 million [see updated figures below] for Skyfall. […]

SKYFALL FORECAST TO CRUSH WEEKEND BOX OFFICE

Box office pundits have become so many Chicken Littles, predicting that Skyfall will crush everything else in sight this weekend. The 007 flick, which opens in many theaters at midnight tonight (a preview on IMAX screens took place on Wednesday), is likely to collect more than $70 million, according to many forecasters, provided that a […]

A FUNNY JAMES BOND?

This may be the year of the star-inspired revisionist approach to classic characters in the movies. Daniel Craig, the latest James Bond, has told the Washington Post that the next 007 movie, Skyfall, will include — horrors! — comedy. “I’m so camp in this one, I’ve gone quite far,” Craig told the newspaper in an […]

BEER DEAL HELPS UNDERWRITE NEXT BOND MOVIE

James Bond guzzling a beer may be the equivalent of Popeye switching his allegiance from spinach to broccoli, but, as they say, business is business, and the Dutch brewer Heineken has paid $45 million to close one of the biggest product-placement deals ever in order to have its brand featured in the next Bond film […]

DIRECTOR AND STAR FINISHED SCRIPT FOR BOND FILM

Daniel Craig has acknowledged that he was frustrated by the mediocre script for the 2008 James Bond movie Quantum of Solace. “You swear that you’ll never get involved with s**t like that. We were f****d,” he told Time Out magazine. “We had the bare bones of a script and then there was a writers’ strike […]

NEXT BOND MOVIE TO BE TITLED SKYFALL

With a title that evokes the tradition of James Bond movies like Goldfinger, Thunderball, Moonraker, and GoldenEye — but not Quantum of Solace — the long-delayed 23rd 007 movie was officially launched at a London news conference today (Thursday). It will be called Skyfall, director Sam Mendes announced, and its stars will include Daniel Craig […]

LONGEST-SERVING JAMES BOND APPRAISES TWO OTHER BONDS

Roger Moore, who played James Bond longer than any other actor, has complained that the 007 franchise has suffered a decline in quality in recent years. In an interview with Varsity, the student newspaper at Cambridge University in England, Moore expressed admiration for Daniel Craig’s performance in the last Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, but […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: DREAM HOUSE

It’s always a bad sign when a studio fails to screen a movie for critics in advance of its release. But how bad could a film starring the likes of Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz and Naomi Watts, and directed by Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, In America, Brothers) really […]

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