Article of TND vs. Titanic at the box office (parallel to King Kong vs. Narnia)
FTseng2749
casting:
Anybody remember way back in December of '97 when, in the U.S., TND
opened the exact same weekend as the box-office mega-juggernaut
Titanic? According to an article on the Box Office prophets webpage,
TND actually gave Titanic a run for its money way back when. TND
finished 2nd to Titanic in box office gross opening weekend, but not by
much. The two movies were almost neck-and-neck for a few weeks before
Titanic pulled away and eventually became the top box-office-grossing
movie of all-time. Here's a clip from the article, which parallels
TND vs. Titanic to this year's King Kong vs. Narnia at the box office:
<snip>
The best comparison here, as much as I hate to make it, is to Titanic.
We know the James Cameron slop-fest had the similar long run time, but
like Kong, it also had some serious competition over its opening
weekend. When the doomed boat opened on December 19, 1997, it had to
wrestle with another much-anticipated film, Tomorrow Never Dies, the
second Bond feature to star Pierce Brosnan. Titanic had to duel to get
the big screens, much like Kong had to do with Narnia. Titanic opened
to what seemed to be a slight $28.6 million (only $3.5 million more
than TND), and questions were raised after opening weekend as to
whether Fox had spent too much on the James Cameron film. Good, bad or
indifferent, I think it's important to remember that Titanic made $8.6
million on its opening Friday, much like Kong's Wednesday.
<snip>
The full article is at:
http://www.boxofficeprophets.com/column/index.cfm?columnID=9319
Considering the competition, TND did incredibly well at the Box Office
($125 million in the U.S. and $339 million worldwide), kudos to Pierce
Brosnan, the marketing/advertising people and the Eon producers for the
Bond movie to not get lost in the Titanic hype.
Of course, the other Brosnan Bond movies have had major competition,
too (GE was up against the Jim Carrey-Ace Ventura sequel, TWINE had
Sleepy Hollow to contend with, DAD had to compete against the 2nd Harry
Potter movie), but none was as big as TND vs. Titanic.
-Frank
P.S. TND was the only one of the Brosnan Bond movies not to hit #1
opening weekend at the box office, the other three hit #1 in spite of
their competition. Also, Brosnan's Bond movies are the 4
top-grossing Bond movies of all time (ignoring inflation), and the only
Bond movies to gross over $100 million domestically. A link to all 20
Bond movies' domestic gross (plus the unofficial Bond movie NSNA) is
at:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/franchises/chart/?id=jamesbond.htm