The 23rd James Bond film - Skyfall, starring Daniel Craig - made a ridiculous amount of money at the box office (over $1 billion) and received a ridiculous amount of critical acclaim (it has a 92% score on Rotten Tomatoes). If you ask me, it wasn't particularly deserved; the film was poorly paced, tonally dissonant, and an inferior version of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. In fact, I'm convinced that ten years from now, its place in the annals of James Bond history will not be nearly so well-regarded.
But I digress - there's no doubt that the movie was a mega-success for Sony Pictures, and that the follow-up, SPECTRE, will attempt to replicate said success. That's why Sony was desperate to bring back director Sam Mendes, and why producers allowed for the production budget to spiral out of control.
The reported budget for Skyfall was between $150 million and $200 million. Thanks to emails leaked by the hackers of Sony Pictures, we know that SPECTRE will cost around $350 million. If that number is shocking to you, it should be - it puts SPECTRE in serious contention for being the most expensive movie ever made.
Now, according to another leaked email, we know that the producers of the film have made significant creative concessions to the Mexican government to receive up to $20 million in tax incentives and rebates to offset the ballooning costs of the film.
From Jonathan Glickman, president of MGM's motion picture group (courtesy of TaxAnalysts.com, which broke this story):
We are currently facing a budget that is far beyond what we anticipated and are under immense pressure to reduce the number to $250M net of rebates and incentives. This is not about 'nickel and diming' the production. As of now, our shooting period is $50M higher than Skyfall and the current gross budget sits in the mid $300Ms, making this one of the most expensive films ever made.
It's obviously not unheard of for a production to receive tax benefits for filming scenes in certain locations. It happens in other countries, it happens in the United States, and it happens all the time.
What is kind of unheard of is the part about a foreign government stipulating specific creative changes to the very script and story. Of course, that's not to say that it's never happened before (there's little doubt that Marvel did some iffy stuff with their Chinese release of Iron Man 3), we've just never seen the details so nakedly aired to the public.
To receive $14 million in incentives, and possibly cadge up to another $6 million, the leaked correspondence states that the following was required:
- Aerial shots of “modern Mexico City buildings" had to appear in the movie.
- Bond villain Sciarra could NOT be played by a Mexican person (and indeed, Italian Monica Bellucci was cast in the role).
- James Bond had to chase after Sciarra during a Mexican Day of the Dead parade instead of a cage match.
- A “special police force” took the place of the Mexican police, as was originally written in the script.
- Instead of Sciarra targeting a Mexican governor for assassination, she’ll target an international ambassador.
- The producers had to cast “a known Mexican actress” as Estrella, whose hotel room Bond will use to hunt down Sciarra (Mexican-born Stephanie Sigman was recently cast in the role).
Ultimately, the changes to the film will make up a very small portion of the final product. In fact, had the email never been leaked, you and I might not have noticed anything unusual about the theatrical release.
Nevertheless, the whole thing comes across as another public embarrassment for a production that has already had several. Besides word getting out that the SPECTRE budget was out of control, it also came to light that there were numerous script problems, including a late-in-the-story twist that many fans despised. Though the script has almost certainly changed since, it's unclear if all the problems have been fixed.
It's understandable why producers would be scrambling to offset the massive price tag of the movie. A $350 million tentpole project absolutely MUST make an enormous amount of money at the box office to be deemed even a little bit successful. Remember - nearly half of ticket sales worldwide go back to theaters, not movie studios. That doesn't leave a lot of room for failure.
And that's assuming the movie even makes it to a billion. If reviews are terrible - which, considering the criticism of the script, isn't outside the realm of possibility - word-of-mouth could really hurt its profitability. Think The Amazing Spider-Man 2 only worse.
What's especially unfortunate about all this is that audiences don't really care to see a James Bond mega-movie in the first place. Some of the most beloved installments - Casino Royale, for example - were a return to barebones action entertainment. They weren't necessarily cheap, but they damn sure didn't break the bank. Obviously, costs go up when you're trying to get directors and actors to return, but there's really no excuse for a spy movie costing as much as a James Cameron film.
Also on Forbes:
