Daniel Craig has a view to box office killing
No Time to Die could become the most lucrative Bond film. Daniel Craig’s last hurrah will mark the end of an era for a secret agent who has never been so drunk, travelled so far nor caused the deaths of so many women.
Daniel Craig’s last hurrah as James Bond will mark the end of an era for a secret agent who has never been so drunk, travelled so far nor caused the deaths of so many women.
His biggest test, however, will be at the box office as he strives to become the most lucrative actor to fill the role since Sean Connery first portrayed Bond on film in 1961.
No Time to Die, released on September 30, will be a watershed moment for cinemas, testing whether audiences still have an appetite for the big screen.
Analysis by The Times of all 24 official Bond films shows that while Craig has already secured the title for the most alcohol units consumed and the greatest mileage, it is the race to fill cinemas that is the closest to call.
Its filmmakers are waiting to find out whether Craig can outperform Connery at the box office by overtaking the Scotsman’s inflation-adjusted record of $US4.93bn ($6.61bn) over his six official Bond films in the 1960s and 70s.
Craig is $US1.28bn short, which would have seemed an impossible gap a few years ago. Then he appeared in Skyfall, which grossed $US1.24bn in adjusted dollars. If No Time to Die, his fifth film, proves to be the tonic to cinema’s poor takings since the pandemic, then that record may be within reach.
But if Covid-19 has caused irreparable damage to the cinema-release model then Craig’s fifth film may not even make the $US711m needed to overtake Roger Moore’s seven-film run.
No Time to Die will have its world premiere on September 28 at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It had been due to be released in April last year, but Eon, the owner of the Bond franchise, and its distributors took the gamble to delay it for 17 months while other studios have released films on streaming services.
The decision has cost an estimated $US17m in interest payments to the financiers who funded the production.
Even if the box-office record eludes him, Craig has still surpassed fellow Bond actors in other respects.
An exhaustive calculation of the distance the character travels in each film by data scientist Richard Carter shows he has already beaten Moore’s tally of 114,366km by 1189km, with more to come in No Time to Die. (Only earthly travel counts, so Moore’s trip to space in Moonraker is excluded.)
Craig is fourth in terms of the different countries he has visited, but is likely to at least match Connery’s total of 18 given that the filming locations in No Time to Die include Jamaica, Norway and the Faroe Islands.
Craig has also been shown drinking more. Even before No Time to Die he had consumed 85 units of alcohol, two more than Moore in three fewer films. Moore will retain his record for the number of minutes as Bond, with 884 over seven films. Even with his final film due to last 163 minutes, Craig will be three hours short of Moore. He will overtake Connery by two minutes.
Pierce Brosnan will also hang on to his title of deadliest Bond, having machinegunned his way through a total of 135 henchmen and villains between 1995 and 2002. Craig’s tally is 76, in third place but within 14 of Moore.
Recent footage suggests Craig is only beginning to hit his stride in terms of killing. Spectre featured 32 deaths at the hand of Bond, almost double the number in each of Craig’s other films. Trailers for No Time to Die suggest a spree of eight in a single sequence, when Bond turns his Aston Martin DB5 in a circle while firing a pair of multi-barrelled machineguns recessed behind the car’s headlights.
Critics have criticised Craig’s films for product placement, including some scenes worthy of a catalogue shoot for Tom Ford in Spectre and a cringe-inducing exchange in Casino Royale in which Bond’s dining partner remarks pointedly about his Omega watch. Figures suggest that although product placement is more prominent, it is less frequent than for his predecessors.
An edited list of brands spotted by users of the Product Placement Blog website suggests that Craig has been featured alongside 92 brands over four films and one trailer, equivalent to 18 per film. This makes him equal lowest alongside Brosnan. Moore’s and Connery’s films each featured an average of 24.
One morbid record likely to cling to Craig is the mortality rate of his lovers. Four out of seven of the women with whom it is intimated that he has had sex have ended up dead, a rate of 57 per cent. George Lazenby was the next most toxic, at 33 per cent, followed by Brosnan (30 per cent), Connery (29 per cent) and Moore (28 per cent). Sex with Timothy Dalton’s Bond was safer, with all his three lovers surviving until the credits rolled.
The Times
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