Sony did expect more and were disappointed in the opening. They'd banked on the new perceived power of Vin Deisel and thought the film would do much better than his 1/2 the cost and a fraction of the marketing The Fast & The Furious, and it didn't. No one was predicting that DAD would thrash XXX in the media, quite the opposite frankly.
MGM said if DAD did as well as the last 3 did in the U.S. that would be fine. No where did they say they expected it to make $200m in the U.S. GE & TWINE earned adjusted around $140m with TND adjusted around $160m. All three of those films had ALOT of marketing, the same as DAD, almost all financed from cross promotional marketing, as did DAD.
On Bond in the U.S.,, this from John Glen in '95 pre Goldeneye:
John Glen interviewed in the British sci-fi magazine Starburst (Issue 199, March 1995)...Glen will still be best remembered for his Bond films. With Martin Campbell in the director's chair for the 17th movie, GoldenEye, John Glen is philosophical and wishes the film well.
"I think it's a wonderful title," he remarks. "I tested Pierce Brosnan and I always thought he was the perfect replacement for Roger Moore, that's why we originally chose him! I shot his tests over 3 days and they were fantastic; screen tests like you've never seen with special effects and everything. We chose some of the famous scenes from previous Bond movies and Pierce performed very well. He's got a very nice rich voice, a nice twinkle and I think he'll do very well, I certainly wish him all the luck in the world."
According to Glen, the $120 million action blockbuster True Lies illustrated the fundamental problem with recent Bond films. "I loved it, I think it gives you some idea of how efficient we were with our budgets of around $32 million. When you have someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger you can command a huge American market which Bonds always had to struggle to do, because they're not considered to be domestic films but foreign films and they never make any huge money."
================================================
Now that was pre Goldeneye which hit the magic $100m mark and did well comparatively with True Lies in the U.S. and Worldwide, something few if any expected at the time. But an interesting perspective by Glenn that Bond films have always been seen as foreign films in the U.S.
Yes the Bond films have always made more overseas than in the U.S. but that's not because of a comparative lack of love in the U.S. for Bond but because Bond does so extraordinarily well in so many different countries around the world. IE: It's appeals both to Norway and The Phillipines, not many films do, and that adds up to huge International fgrosses, not because people in France love Bond more than in the U.S.. Really, only in the U.K. does Bond do better than the U.S. & Canada when you look at the Bond rankings at the end of the year and the amount of admissions vs population.
Are the Bond films in the U.S. the HUGE mega blockbusters of the GF-TB era no, but that was almost 40 years ago, they weren't that by the late 60's euther. This is a series of 20 films, where the 20th film had more admissions than any in the U.S. since the 5th, 37 years ago. What isn't impressive about that?
We'll see the comparative lack of love of Bond when or if XXX 3 (or maybe XXX2 comes around and see what the numbers are there. Series have come and gone (Lethal Weapon, Batman, Die Hard) as we tired of them and yet Bond is still here, that's real love not a passing fancy.
