"No Mr Bond, I expect you to be delayed..."

No Mr Bond I expect you to be delayed…again!

Nobody would have believed that, in the last days of 2020, yet another lockdown would cause James Bond's latest outing No time To Die to be delayed...again.

COVID-19 seems to have been able to achieve what Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Francisco Scaramanga and Raoul Silva ultimately proved unable to do, stop James Bond in his tracks.

James Bond's production team don't know about TIPS.

TIPS is a method of identifying external market threats that you have little or no control over which might impact the future performance of your businesses.

All of us are exposed to various kinds of business risks and it requires strategic thought to identify them and decide how we might adapt, pivot or mitigate should these risks ever come to pass.

For instance, many businesses have succession planning baked into them if, heaven forbid, the owner suddenly became unavailable to the business, whether through illness or some other event.

All responsible businesses plan for this such that, if that risk ever came to pass, then the business owners could implement the succession plan and operations could continue unabated rather than come to a complete halt.

However, with COVID-19, many businesses and, in some cases, entire sectors have come to a complete halt - something very few of them ever planned for.

Hospitality, Travel and Tourism and the Food and Beverage sectors, all have been seriously affected by the global pandemic and cinemas also.

James Bond's latest outing "No Time to Die" has cost the thick end of $200 million to make and investors will soon start to get worried about generating a return on their investment.

How much longer can the franchise's owners (EON Productions and Danjaq LLC) hold out for cinemas to re-open before accepting they need to relent and persuade online services such as Netflix, Amazon or Sky to stream the movie directly into our homes instead?

If the producers have this conversation with the likes of Netflix or Amazon sooner rather than later, they will be able to so on the front foot and in the strongest negotiating position, rather than “wait it out".

Who knows what might happen between now until October - we might still be in lockdown or under a new form of restrictions.

Further delays could seriously undermine the credibility of the James Bond franchise and, indeed, the franchise owners.

No doubt, investors will be nervous as returns on their $200 million investment will dilute over time.

So, maybe the statement that the owners have said that they’re going to wait it out until October is simply a coded message to the streaming companies to stump up the cash for this much awaited movie right here, right now.

Whatever happens, it’s an interesting dynamic to watch play out in the media and I suspect that nobody really knows what might happen next.

Not even James Bond.

Marvel-lous

keith@salesmarvel.co.uk