Apple, Amazon Join Race for James Bond Film Rights

Re:Apple, Amazon Join Race for James Bond Film Rights by mortenjorck on Thursday September 07, 2017 @01:05AM (#15189255)

  Some observers feel that the franchise, by only limiting 
  itself to theatrical movies, remains vastly under-utilized by 
  21st century standards, where expectations are to exploit IP 
  across all mediums, push out merchandising for all age 
  brackets and have spin-offs and cinematic universes.

As unlikely as it may seem for Apple to be bidding on the rights to 007 in the first place, it seems vastly less likely for Apple to use them for anything less focused than a franchise of films or an iTunes-exclusive TV series. Disney-level, cross-media IP exploitation has to be among the most foreign concepts I can imagine for the company.

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Re:Apple, Amazon Join Race for James Bond Film Rights by achamayou on Thursday September 07, 2017 @03:29AM (#15189761)

Not sure why they'd think that, there's been video games (some good ones, even), there are regular limited edition watch releases, perfume, there's plenty of product placement in the movies themselves (cars, bikes, drinks...). Could they do much more of it without going over the top? It's not that clear.

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Re:Apple, Amazon Join Race for James Bond Film Rights by michaelt on Thursday September 07, 2017 @07:58AM (#15190968)

  Could they do much more of it without going over the
  top? It's not that clear.

Star Wars manages to produce prodigious amounts of merch and people eat it up. 188 different Lego sets [2]. 70+ trading cards [3]. 150+ video games [4]. Innumerable tee shirts [1]. They'll even put their brand on bags of fruit.

You can extract a lot of money from fans - especially if your franchise has inter-generational appeal.

[1] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=star+wars+shirt&tbm=isch [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Lego_Star_Wars_sets [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_trading_card [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Wars_video_games

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Re:Apple, Amazon Join Race for James Bond Film Rights by smegel on Thursday September 07, 2017 @03:33AM (#15189780)

> spin-offs and cinematic universes.

I suspect it is about this. TV shows, spin-off movies based on Felix...

But I think that would tarnish the brand. Bond has always been about long-awaited epic movies, not yearly re-hashes of the same stuff.

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Re:Apple, Amazon Join Race for James Bond Film Rights by pamqzl on Thursday September 07, 2017 @03:39AM (#15189803)

So was Star Wars. But it turns out it's more profitable as the latter.

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Re:Apple, Amazon Join Race for James Bond Film Rights by smegel on Thursday September 07, 2017 @03:48AM (#15189844)

I'm pretty sure Bond has grossed a lot more than Star Wars. I wonder how profitable Star Wars will be after the 24th installment. I'm guessing not very.

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Re:Apple, Amazon Join Race for James Bond Film Rights by nickonline on Thursday September 07, 2017 @05:14AM (#15190171)

You'd be wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films...

Imagine how much further ahead Star Wars will be after the 24th installment

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Re:Apple, Amazon Join Race for James Bond Film Rights by smegel on Thursday September 07, 2017 @05:33AM (#15190232)

> The films in the cross-franchise Marvel Cinematic Universe have collectively grossed the most, amassing over $12 billion at the box office, although the Eon James Bond films have earned over $14 billion in total when adjusted to current prices

I'm not even sure Star Wars is in the top 3.

And I think interest will wane after the current crop of movies being ~12 let alone 24. Its all character exploitation at this point, and there aren't many left who's lives haven't been explored yet.

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Re:Apple, Amazon Join Race for James Bond Film Rights by tj-teej on Thursday September 07, 2017 @01:40PM (#15194071)

Star Wars was art and had integrity. Unfortunately selling Jar Jar Binks dolls is more "profitable". The Bond franchise is art and has integrity, let's hope it can keep it.

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Re:Apple, Amazon Join Race for James Bond Film Rights by matt_s on Thursday September 07, 2017 @09:11AM (#15191463)

That might be what the Broccoli family wants - a company that will protect the 007 IP with just movies and not dilute/exploit it with other stuff.

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Re:Apple, Amazon Join Race for James Bond Film Rights by digi_owl on Thursday September 07, 2017 @05:06AM (#15190133)

The funny thing about Apple is that it gets a whole lot of promo from TV series and such already. This because Hollywood pretty much runs on their platform (probably thanks to getting the GUI out there, being the launch platform for Photoshop, and thus the whole industry learned Apple by rote memorization).

Thus whenever the script required a computer, phone or something similar in the shot, it will be an Apple product. Because that was what the staff was carrying.

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