18 replies to this topic

[Rufus Ffolkes]

There's been a fair amount of discussion about the box office performance of the various films, but relatively little about actual attendance figures. I recently stumbled across this graph that charts the actual admissions to the Bond films throughout the years:

http://k1bond007.sha..._admissions.png

 world_admissions.png   51.1KB   25 downloads

[Binyamin]

So twice as many people watched "Thunderball" than "Goldeneye." Interesting. That really puts the insane popularity of 60's Bond into perspective.

[Napoleon Solo]

So twice as many people watched "Thunderball" than "Goldeneye." Interesting. That really puts the insane popularity of 60's Bond into perspective.

Exactly. Basically 1964 and 1965 were the zenith of Bond popularity and haven't really been duplicated since.

[Syndicate]

What is not talked about is how many of what age groups in what decade. For example like today's mid 30s to early 40s, how many watch still watch Bond movies or are still Bond fans, also how were they in the 80s when they were in middle school and high school. Also even today's 70 something how many still do go and watch a Bond movie compare to when they were young or even back in the mid 90s. Those are the stuff that should be talked, when it comes to the attendance through the years and all the in betweens.

[oatesy]

Interesting that OHMSS which "flopped" has attendance not far from YOLT and DAF, and stood up well against many Roger entries as well.

Overall attendance figures for all films were much higher in the 60s in any case. Without the competition from video games or DVD a weekly trip to the cinema was more common. I doubt we'll ever see figures as high as Thunderball again. It would be interesting to see what worldwide admissions were for Avatar/Dark Knight et al.

[Safari Suit]

It's also interesting that for all the talk of TSWLM "saving the series" (which I guess it kind of did, after TMWTGG's rapid dicline) and "breaking Moore's Bond" LALD was actually more successful.

It is worth considering the figures in a wider context. While the steady decline in the 80s is notable, it's worth remembering that cinema attendance generally took a big knock at the time, largely due to the rise of home video, particularly in the UK

[BoogieBond]

Yeah, It shows nicely in a nutshell Bonds Popularity cycles, Bondmania Exploded upto Thunderball. Then it's noticeable YOLT has about half the attendance of TB. Then in the 70's the attendances went back to steady, but lower than GF/TB levels, then the dip in the 80's and Brozza's 90's era getting a nice higher peak figures again(But lower than the 70's) and CR getting a resurgence of popularity. With each change of Bond actor theres a little spike/injection of interest and higher attendance. It looks like once each Bond actor gets past 4/5 films, popularity drops and its time for a change of actor.
I also agree that the 60's figure are high because of video/DVD, I imagine all these attendances include cinema re-runs/double bills etc, so if someone in 1967 wanted to watch TB again, they would watch a GF/TB double bill/rerun shooting up that films attendance figures. Now someone would just buy the DVD.

[Shakey Martini]

Would it be fair to say that modern day box office attendance figures can't tell the whole story regarding Bond's popularity as now so many people will just wait the few months to buy, rent, download, pay per view, pirate etc rather than go to the cinema. I think considering these other avenues the recent box office figures are very good but it does makes me wonder just how many millions of people have seen for instance a Daniel Craig Bond film regardless of the format of viewing and how these figures would stack up against the height of 'Bondmania' when the cinema held total dominance.

[doublenoughtspy]

Admissions are an interesting statistic, and a much more "fair" comparison of films than grosses, which can be tied to inflation, ticket prices, currency valuation, etc.

That being said, that chart doesn't break down the admissions by region. US admissions return more money to the producers and studio than overseas admissions. Overseas admissions give about 60% of their take to the theatre and 40% to the studio & producers, whereas U.S. ones return approximately 50% to theatre and 50% to the studio/producers.

10% isn't a monumental difference, but when you are talking millions of dollars, it represents a lot of money.

[jaguar007]

It's also interesting that for all the talk of TSWLM "saving the series" (which I guess it kind of did, after TMWTGG's rapid dicline) and "breaking Moore's Bond" LALD was actually more successful.

See Doublenoughtspy's comment. These are world wide attendance figures. I know in the US, TSWLM was far more successful than LALD (which had far lower attendance in the US than DAF did) and that is where much of that reputation came from.

[Turn]

What is not talked about is how many of what age groups in what decade. For example like today's mid 30s to early 40s, how many watch still watch Bond movies or are still Bond fans, also how were they in the 80s when they were in middle school and high school. Also even today's 70 something how many still do go and watch a Bond movie compare to when they were young or even back in the mid 90s. Those are the stuff that should be talked, when it comes to the attendance through the years and all the in betweens.

Speaking from personal experience, I am in that first category, having grown up with Bond films and seeing them new when they came out in my teen years and right up to the present day, as well as on television.

My parents went on dates to the '60s films and still see a new Bond film on release, as well as my uncle and his wife and now their kids.

The interesting thing about going to see a new Bond film in a cinema is the various age groups who attend. I'm sure back in the '60s when more people went to the cinema (even though television cut into that) Bond probably started out as something of interest to adults and eventually younger people discovered them and by the time of GF and TB there was more across-the-board appeal to attract even younger kids despite some very adult themes.

Parents who went then had kids and new generations of fans were born and the parents still stayed interested. My daughter was in grade school when CR came out and told me the boys in her class were talking about seeing it. Repeated TV and video viewings probably do share some blame for drop-offs in attendance, but they probably also attract some fans that way as well.

The thing about Bond is it's got evergreen appeal. Remember a few years ago when some poll revealed Dan Brown's Robert Langdon was the most famous literary character or something like that. Stieg Larsen comes along and does anybody care now about Langdon? Then something will replace the Larsen books, but Bond will still be around, as probably will Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter and a few others.

[Napoleon Solo]

Admissions are an interesting statistic, and a much more "fair" comparison of films than grosses, which can be tied to inflation, ticket prices, currency valuation, etc.

That being said, that chart doesn't break down the admissions by region. US admissions return more money to the producers and studio than overseas admissions. Overseas admissions give about 60% of their take to the theatre and 40% to the studio & producers, whereas U.S. ones return approximately 50% to theatre and 50% to the studio/producers.

10% isn't a monumental difference, but when you are talking millions of dollars, it represents a lot of money.

Not only that, but in the crucial first week, in excess of 90 percent goes to the studio, with the theater getting a trifle. That's why the popcorn costs so much. The theater is getting very little of what you're paying for a ticket on that opening weekend. A year or so ago, ABC's Nightline had a segment about movie theater economics, using popcorn as the primary example (it obviously applies to all the other concessions but popcorn was an easy to grasp example).

[Rufus Ffolkes]

Not only that, but in the crucial first week, in excess of 90 percent goes to the studio, with the theater getting a trifle. That's why the popcorn costs so much. The theater is getting very little of what you're paying for a ticket on that opening weekend.

That used to be true, but is no longer the case:

http://io9.com/#!5747305/how-much-money-does-a-movie-need-to-make-to-be-profitable

And it used to be true across the board that the opening weekend was when the biggest percentage of profits went to the studios. In the past, studios "strong-armed exhibitors into these front-loaded deals, wherein the overwhelming majority of the opening weekend take goes to the studio," says David Mumpower with Box Office Prophets. "As much as 90% of that revenue is theirs." The theaters only make money by selling "overpriced snacks" to audiences during that first week — but in the following weeks, the theater's cut goes up. Eventually, by the fourth week, the studio's cut has fallen to around 52 percent in most cases.

But after a bunch of theater chains declared bankruptcy in the early 2000s, these frontloaded deals started to fall out of fashion, says Doug Stone with BoxOfficeAnalyst.com. Nowadays, with many of the bigger Hollywood blockbusters, the theater chains just get a standard cut of the whole revenue, regardless of which weekend it comes in.

[jrcjohnny99]

There's a couple of other things worth noting, especially regarding Brosnan era onwards vs 60s-80s.
1. Pre 90s, the studios had very little control on prints/piracy/releasing in 'third world' countries, specifically Africa and South East Asia; almost no admission numbers/$ grosses would have been counted for those countries, also India, pre 80s typically did not buy any western films.
The 90s onwards saw the rise of globalisation an true global distribution which means both that a) Bond is now seen in more countries than ever before and that every admission is counted and that the old print piracy is largely gone.

2. Also pre 90s, Bond films were banned in USSR and China; two of the largest markets in the world, I believe from the Broz years on, those markets did get Bond films.

I think it's fair to say that if you account for the above, you can probably add another 20% on the admissions of all pics pre 90s.

Someone asked about The Dark Knight as well; I believe the global estimated admissions for TDK were around the 150 million mark.

[jaguar007]

I'm sure back in the '60s when more people went to the cinema (even though television cut into that)

That made me think, dip people really go to the cinema more in the 60? I would be interested in seeing a report that shows how many box office tickets were sold period from year or decade. People have stated that in the 60s theaters did not have the competition of home video etc. However thinking about it, I think there are more larger movie theaters now than there were in the 60s. In the 60s, movie theaters had one or two screens, now they have 12 or so. Are more people going to the movies now, or are there just more movies???

[Rufus Ffolkes]

In North America, movie attendance has been in gradual decline since the end of World War II:

http://www.ehow.com/...attendance.html

Even with some 40,000 screens in multiplex theaters across the United Sates, weekly attendance has dropped significantly since the 1930s. In 2007, only 22 percent of the population attended the cinema frequently, which is to say once a month.

[Safari Suit]

It's also interesting that for all the talk of TSWLM "saving the series" (which I guess it kind of did, after TMWTGG's rapid dicline) and "breaking Moore's Bond" LALD was actually more successful.

See Doublenoughtspy's comment. These are world wide attendance figures. I know in the US, TSWLM was far more successful than LALD (which had far lower attendance in the US than DAF did) and that is where much of that reputation came from.

Yeah, but it's still a bit exaggerated. Especially as according to the list ACE gives here the difference between US attendance of LALD and TSWLM was actually fairly minor.

I do think TSWLM deserves _some_ credit for "saving the series" after the notable decline and then low-point of TMWTGG, but I do also think it's probably something which probably came about because it made for good publicity.

[Rufus Ffolkes]

I'm surprised by how relatively low Octopussy ranks. I always thought of it as being much more successful than FYEO. It was considered a big hit in North America, as it was the sixth highest grossing movie of 1983. It must not have done all that well internationally.

[Cruiserweight]

Surprised LALD is in fourth place