The new James Bond movie, Spectre, is predicted to fall short of its predecessor Skyfall at the US box office this weekend, according to reports in Hollywood.
Deadline suggests Sam Mendes’s film will pull in between $70m and $75m, some way short of Skyfall’s $88.4m (£57.3m) bow in 2012, 007’s best-ever US debut. Such figures would represent something of a disappointment for studios Sony and MGM, which have spent a reported $300m on the movie.
Spectre has set a new record at the UK box office since being released on 26 October, taking £40m ($61.7m) in its first week to surpass Skyfall’s opening. But Deadline suggests the film, Daniel Craig’s fourth and possibly final outing as 007, could be hampered by unspectacular reviews and competition from The Peanuts Movie when it opens in North America this weekend.
US reviews for Spectre have generally been weaker than those from British publications, pulling the Rotten Tomatoes rating for the film down to just 64%, the lowest of the Craig era. Middling 2008 effort Quantum of Solace managed 65%, while twin 007 powerhouses Skyfall and Casino Royale secured 93% and 95% respectively.
Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times called Mendes’s film a “slick, beautifully photographed, action-packed, international thriller with a number of wonderfully, ludicrously entertaining set pieces, a sprinkling of dry wit, myriad gorgeous women and a classic psycho-villain”. But Vanity Fair’s reviewer, Richard Lawson, said studios had “cracked under the pressure” of “Bond fatigue”, adding: “He’s still passingly entertaining, but he’s stopped making sense, and you wish he’d just gone to bed before he started in on this new, tiresome, meandering story.”
By contrast, both the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph handed Spectre five-star reviews, and many other UK critics followed suit.
Bond’s future as a Sony distributed franchise could be damaged by any failure to repeat Skyfall’s series-best $1.1bn global return, especially given that the new film cost up to $100m more than its predecessor. Relative failure for the new movie could also make it more likely that Craig will hang up his boots as Bond, given Spectre’s denouement offers him a satisfying sendoff.
