MGM and Annapurna are reportedly set to imminently announce they will team on the domestic release of the next James Bond film, the twenty fifth in the series and the fifth of the Daniel Craig-era, with all the final touches to be finalized this week.
The news is not unexpected in the wake of the announcement last month that MGM was joining forces with Annapurna in a joint venture.
MGM’s Gary Barber and producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson are reportedly calling the shots, with Erik Lomis executing the domestic distribution and Marc Weinstock the marketing for the domestic release. Lomis worked on the distribution of Bond films at MGM, and Weinstock marketed two of them while at Sony Pictures.
This helps put the franchise back at its original home at MGM. There are still major decisions to be made regarding both international distribution and ancillary distribution, Sony Pictures and 20th Century Fox handled those elements respectively but Sony’s deal has already expired and Fox’s is almost up.
Warners, Sony and Universal are still battling hard for the worldwide distribution rights, a big slice of the cake considering Bond films make over 70% of their coin outside the United States. The Daniel Craig-led new film still has yet to secure a director and opens November 8th 2019.
