What if Licence To Kill was released in the autumn of 1989?
PPK 7.65mm
Saratoga Springs NY USAPosts: 1,253MI6 Agent
I had a thought recently, what if Licence To Kill was released in autumn of 1989 instead of the summer?
My thought was since the summer of 1989 had so many other squeals such as Ghostbusters II, Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, and Lethal Weapon II competing against Licence To Kill autumn would be a better time for it since movie releases at this point of a given year tend to not to be high profile big budget films. Also imagine that United Artists was able to give the film a decent marketing budget instead of the lackluster one we got. I feel that had this happened Licence To Kill would have been more successful at the box office.
My thought was since the summer of 1989 had so many other squeals such as Ghostbusters II, Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, and Lethal Weapon II competing against Licence To Kill autumn would be a better time for it since movie releases at this point of a given year tend to not to be high profile big budget films. Also imagine that United Artists was able to give the film a decent marketing budget instead of the lackluster one we got. I feel that had this happened Licence To Kill would have been more successful at the box office.
Comments
Batman was released on June 19, 1989. LTK was released less than a month later.
In answer to the original question, LTK would have certainly made more money had it been released in the fall. But it would have also needed a better marketing campaign to break even with TLD.
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
The IMDB reports that Batman's UK opening was August 11. Keep in mind that films stayed in theaters much longer back then. My US ticket for Batman is dated October 4.
Luckily it was already pretty good. Better written than Batman as well, though I love both films.
@Revelator, In my mind, if LTK have the same marketing budget that TLD gotten it would have helped it make more money. Many a James Bond scholar has mentioned that LTK had a poor marketing plan, along with a small budget for marketing the movie itself was a big reason why it underperformed at the box office.
LTK is a very odd movie. Great performance by TD and a trailblazer for the harder Bond that would follow Brosnan but lacking key elements. It looked cheap but had a great Villain and strong female lead. Its disjointed.
On November 27 1989, Avianca Flight 203, a Colombian domestic flight, was destroyed by a bomb in an assassination attempt by Pablo Escobar on presidential candidate Cesar Gaviria. In fact, Gaviria was not on the flight but all passengers and crew were killed, including some U.S. citizens.
As would have been reasonably plain in 1989, Franz Sanchez's character was, at least in part, based on Escobar, whose drug cartel, violence and trafficking to the U.S. made him especially notorious. Had LTK been scheduled for a release date after November, a minor sub-plot of the film might have been considered distasteful: Sanchez has Stinger missiles because he is threatening to bring down an American airliner unless the DEA lays off him. This unforeseen rub against reality, of sorts, might have required some further editing of the film, focussed on the expository dialogue between Pam and Bond about Sanchez's threat; the bombing of Avienca Flight 203 might have been considered too recent a tragedy for that particular sub-plot of the film to remain intact. As it is, in this respect the film seems almost, with hindsight, disturbingly if fleetingly prescient.
For starters, it was far too derivative. It seemed like a Miami Vice episode, and by the end of the 80s, people were pretty tired of all the Latin American drug dealer TV shows and movies. It also couldn't make up its mind about whether to be a more hard-hitting, adult-oriented film or one for the kids, with the corny jokes and cardboard characters. To be sure, there are some good moments in the movie, including the torture scene with Bond. Dalton turns in a fine performance. But the two female leads were unappealing, and that didn't help.
Dalton's previous effort was a far better film, but he didn't pull audiences in the way he should have. Licence to Kill lacked the scope and romance of that film -- it was grimy and cheap looking, even though it had a fair budget.
Fans don't get this, but general audiences were turned off by it. All the marketing in the world wasn't going to convince them otherwise.
The fact that LTK had to deal with underwhelming performance of its predecessor and was released at a period when many American competing franchises were in full swing suggests that poor marketing would have doomed the movie. General audiences don't have the opportunity to be "turned off" by a film they've barely encountered, especially if it's released at a time when newer franchises are getting the attention.
I have no doubt that the film would have made more money--and perhaps have enjoyed a modest success--if it had been released in the fall and been granted a larger marketing budget with better posters and trailers.
That -particularly in the case of Moonraker - is a pretty subjective statement.
I was a teenager in 1979 and people were raving about how good MR was.
If TB was the epitome of the Connery Bonds, Moonraker was Moore‘s.
Back in the day, MR was State of Art, Moore was never more popular and the pre-internet word of mouth could not have been any better.
I am pretty sure that everybody who saw it back in 1979 will agree with me on that
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Who are you and what have you done to the real Barbel?
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Young teen and everyone was talking about the new Bond
Film.
It was consensus that Moore had been too old, but Dalton was regarded to be too mousy in comparison.
But it was before internet fora and most of us relied on professional reviewers(tv, newspapers, magazines) and same-minded friends.
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
The funny thing is that critics were relatively kind to the film here. Some even thought it was better than The Living Daylights and a good direction for the franchise. So, it was audiences that rejected the movie.
A telltale sign, if I recall correctly, is that it was distributed through one of the lesser movie chains, AMC. They tended to have more screens but carried movies not expected to do as much box office. The premium movie chains at the time did not carry it here, at least where I was. The same thing happened with the Star Trek film. That means someone decided even before marketing that the film was not likely to do much box office.
Another sign is the home video market. Licence to Kill made it to the bargain bin pretty quickly.
Moonraker was a gigantic hit, so much so that For Your Eyes Only was a shock. I saw it with my best friend and his dad, and the three of us came out of the theater not quite sure we'd seen a Bond movie, not because it was bad -- it's certainly one of the better -- but because it was so earthbound compared to the megahit epic that was Moonraker. Americans loved that movie, camp and all, and the fantasy space age angle of the film was no problem for audiences.
Why, nothing at all- she's right here. :007)
And that is anecdotal evidence. I was around when LTK was around and most of the people I talked said it was pretty good. That's also anecdotal evidence. Returning to the main point, Die Another Day was a big hit, but was there much buzz about it being a good film?
Not so much rejected as neglected. It's easy for a film to get lost in the shuffle if it's from an aging foreign franchise that's surrounded by newer domestic ones that are much better promoted.
Someone from marketing or someone from United Artists/MGM? And was AMC the sole theater chain that played the film in the US?
In those days, people talked and phoned each other about movies. Licence to Kill got bad word of mouth from a lot of people. Movies were cheap, and people picked from the lot at multiplexes. People were less concerned about wasting money than time.
This article summarizes some of the feelings.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/how-licence-kill-almost-killed-james-bond-franchise-1224180
I remember the summer of '89 vividly and it's quite true American audiences really didn't give a s**t about the new Bond film.
They were about as excited for LTK as they were the Karate Kid sequel that year. I felt like one of the film's only supporters seeing it in the cinema multiple times. Mostly empty seats, though the few audience members did perk up and cheer at the water ski bit and the wheelie stunt. Just about everyone I knew skipped this one in the cinemas.
Although the marketing was extremely weak and the posters looked last minute, the general vibe was LTK just didn't feel like a Bond film. Even when the film hit the video stores for rental, multiple copies sat on the shelves untouched while everyone was renting INDY 3 and LETHAL WEAPON 2
.
I had a friend who was a big action movie fan: Van Damme, Arnold, Stallone, etc. He had never seen a Bond film before and I picked LICENCE. He liked it and thought it had great action and stunts. So I showed him the other Bond films. This was a guy who really wasn't interested in movies made before he was born, yet the Connery Bonds clicked for him.
Although something like LTK was more up his alley, he enjoyed GF, DAF and NSNA far more.
Not anecdotal evidence.
Just go back to recent movie magazines and newspapers, audiences and professional critics all endorsed MR.
And it seems that Barbel C&D and Matt all confirmed this.
Just because you don‘t like what we are telling you doesn‘t make our experiences ‚anecdotal‘.
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Marketing can impact a film's success, but in those days, word of mouth was far more powerful. And it got either bad word of mouth or none at all. The theater I saw it in was less than half full, and this was soon after it opened. No multi-million-dollar ad campaign would have saved it.