James Bond and the Mad Dash for Franchise IP
The day after she gave up control of the James Bond franchise to Amazon, Barbara Broccoli spent the evening with a Bond Girl, a Bond Girl who helped the MI6 agent defeat a billionaire technology and media mogul seeking global domination.
On Feb. 21, Broccoli attended a Film Academy screening of The Accidental Getaway Driver, the Sing J. Lee film on which she serves as an executive producer. Clad in a maroon velvet pantsuit and sneakers, Broccoli was joined at the hip that evening by the Oscar-winning actress Michelle Yeoh, who played the Chinese secret agent and Bond love interest Wai Lin in Tomorrow Never Dies.
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In the 1997 film Bond (played by Pierce Brosnan) partners with Wai Lin to battle the tycoon Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce), seeking to leverage his corporate empire to control the world.
It may have been ahead of its time.
When Tomorrow Never Dies was released, Amazon was an online bookstore, a competitor to Barnes & Noble. Suffice it to say, the company’s founder Jeff Bezos had grander ambitions. Bezos now controls one of the world’s largest tech companies, one of the world’s largest streaming services in Prime Video, one of the world’s preeminent news organizations The Washington Post, and even a company sending rockets into space and satellites into orbit, Blue Origin.
And as of Feb. 20, he also controls Bond, James Bond.
When The Hollywood Reporter asked Broccoli at the Getaway Driver screening about the decision to give up control of the iconic franchise, she politely declined to talk about the deal and preferred to focus on the film she was there to support. “I’m happy you’re here to see the movie,” she said.
The blockbuster deal that took Hollywood by storm will see Amazon MGM Studios secure control of the Bond franchise from Broccoli and her half-brother Michael G. Wilson. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, though in statements both Wilson and Broccoli cited his retirement as a driver of the decision, and they will retain some economic ownership of the franchise. “Barbara and I agree, it is time for our trusted partner, Amazon MGM Studios, to lead James Bond into the future,” Wilson said.
One thing is clear, it won’t be cheap. In addition to a payment for that control, the continued economic stake is sure to provide their families a “Bond dividend” for years to come. According to corporate filings in the U.K., EON Productions — the Broccoli and Wilson company that had controlled Bond until now — received ￡235 million in revenue in 2021, the year the last Bond film No Time to Die was released. Even years without films were quite lucrative: In 2023, EON had revenue of more than ￡22 million, in 2022 it brought in nearly ￡16 million.
The shock and awe of the deal underscores just how rare truly impactful deals for prominent intellectual property truly are. When Amazon paid $8.5 billion for MGM Studios, Bezos himself explained that they made the deal because of MGM’s “vast, deep catalogue of much beloved intellectual property.”
But while it included some other franchises like Rocky, Creed, Road House and The Silence of the Lambs, control of Bond remained elusive. But the price is likely to be worth it, if Amazon can execute.
“Cementing Bond could pay for this transaction multiple times over in success,” Lightshed analyst Rich Greenfield says. “Can they make Bond the next Marvel? Who knows. Bond has always been so tightly controlled. Sporadic movies, there’s never been a TV series, there isn’t theme park world built around it. How can you create the world of Bond?”
Hollywood is still in an IP-driven era, and Bezos’ Bond deal is perhaps the best example of the steep price that companies will pay to get what they want (or at least what they think consumers want).
As a top entertainment executive tells THR, franchise-quality IP is so scarce that companies need to fully exploit what they control, even at the risk of overexposure. And they need to do their best to develop new IP despite the high cost, years of development and inherent risk.
Look at Warner Bros. Discovery, which is trying to reboot its DC Comics film franchise, home of characters like Batman and Wonder Woman. WBD is pouring cash into this year’s Superman film, which is meant to kickstart a new universe, the beginning of a multi-billion dollar bet on DC IP. The goal for the company is to make two live-action films and one animated movie per year while also producing two live-action and two animated series for Max per year.
“It’s an almost 80-year history of some the most iconic heroes and villains in the world,” says DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn. “We want to allow that to continue. We don’t want these characters to die out. We want to bring new stories and new life, we want to introduce these characters to new generations.”
Peter Safran, Gunn’s co-CEO, says that they promised WBD CEO David Zaslav to honor and build on the DC legacy. “But it’s also a promise to the fans that know and love these characters,” he says. “But equally important, it’s our promise to the people who have yet to discover the magic and the power of this magnificent canon. We’re going to do everything in our power to deliver on that promise.”
And if a blue-chip franchise does become available, entertainment companies need to do whatever it takes to get a piece of it.
Consider Bluey.
The animated Australian series has emerged into a truly global phenomenon, becoming the most popular preschool franchise on the planet, and the most-streamed show in the U.S. last year per Nielsen, a coup for Disney+ given Netflix’s scale.
The only problem? Disney, the company with more expertise exploiting IP than any other entertainment brand on planet Earth, does not own Bluey, with Australia’s Ludo Studios and BBC Studios controlling the franchise.
So Disney got creative: It cut deals for the first Bluey feature film, with Disney securing the global theatrical rights, and it is bringing the Bluey characters to its theme parks and cruise ships around the world.
Even if you can’t buy the IP, getting a piece of it is better than nothing.
Similarly, Illumination and Comcast executed a coup of their own. One of the few companies to create valuable new IP in recent years (the Minions are everywhere), Illumination CEO Chris Meledandri helped wrangle one of the last great underexploited franchises for his studio: Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. While Nintendo still owns the plumbers, Comcast and Illumination now have an entire animated world to exploit in theaters (a Mario Bros. sequel arrives in 2026), to go along with the physical worlds at the Universal theme parks.
And every once in a while, a creative deal can be made to buy IP outright. In 2021 Netflix poured more than $500 million into a new entity established by the family of author Roald Dahl, per U.K. filings. That cash gave the global streaming giant control of IP that includes Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, The BFG, The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Dahl’s other characters.
Though that deal is also a cautionary tale. Aside from 2023’s short film The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and this year’s animated project The Twits, Netflix has yet to fully execute on the promise of the Dahl IP.
IP is a game of risks and rewards. When a franchise works, it can turn into a perpetual money machine, spitting out cash for decades via films, series, music, consumer products and theme park worlds. But if it is allowed to fade into irrelevance, or overexposed to the point of consumer indifference, the steep costs may not be worth it.
For a company like Amazon that uses its massive retail business to support everything else it does, James Bond is not only a film and series IP play, but a consumer products play. Bond action figures and merchandise, after all, is a click and free two-day shipping away.
For many traditional entertainment companies, it is a tough game to play, let alone be competitive in.
Even Disney is not immune to the risks. Star Wars, overseen by Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy, who is expected to retire this year, is a valuable franchise, with hit shows like The Mandalorian and popular theme park lands. But there hasn’t been a feature film in six years, and the company has struggled to reboot around new characters (Mando excepted).
And arguably the most successful modern franchise play in the world, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is going through its own precarious moment. Where once every film was a smash, recent projects like Captain America: Brave New World and The Marvels have been more hit or miss, though a franchise reboot with The Fantastic Four later this year has Disney execs hoping that the MCU flywheel can kick back into action.
“You increasingly have the legacy media players that are just squeezed out of any significant IP skirmishes that are going to happen in the future,” says Jeremy Goldman, an analyst for eMarketer. “It’s a few players to lose, and everybody else just has to be thinking about how do they get thrifty and figure out how do they do the best with everything that falls through the cracks.”
And as Amazon seeks to deploy James Bond (and for that matter, the Bond world’s library of heroes and villains) across its platforms, there are lessons to be learned from the competition.
“Hopefully they’ve seen the mistakes others have made, and they are judicious with how fast and how much,” Greenfield says, “But there is no doubt in my mind that there is franchise potential here that goes well beyond just a movie every three to 10 years.”
Of course, the perils and promise of franchise IP have been known to Hollywood for decades, to the point of being a Bond movie punchline.
At the end of Tomorrow Never Dies, moments before Bond dispatches Carver with a giant drilling machine, the MI6 agent grabs the villain by the shirt collar, looks him in the eyes and shouts “you forgot the first rule of mass media Elliot. Give the people what they want!”
Now the tables have been turned, and a mogul has the secret agent in his grasp. For better or for worse, Amazon and Bezos are going to give the people exactly what they want: A whole lot of James Bond.
This story first appeared in the Feb. 26 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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