@DRDMovieMusings said:

I'm building my own personal Movie ROI Database that measures, among other things, the ROI for each movie vs. all the movies I have in my database of the same release year. When I can get all these Bond movies into it, I'll circle back with a link.

Did you ever get this done for all the Bond films? It would be interesting to see how it compared...

@Midi-chlorian_Count said:

@DRDMovieMusings said:

I'm building my own personal Movie ROI Database that measures, among other things, the ROI for each movie vs. all the movies I have in my database of the same release year. When I can get all these Bond movies into it, I'll circle back with a link.

Did you ever get this done for all the Bond films? It would be interesting to see how it compared...

First of all, I really dig what you did here!

Second, I haven't gotten through Thunderball yet, BUT, my favourite Bond film may actually be the non-canonical Never Say Never Again which, apparently, was a kind of redux of Thunderball.

At any rate, while I don't have the same number of movies in each year, I do have a minimum of at least eight titles for each year. Below is my list of Bond titles ranked by profitability vs. the profitability for all movies (that I have in my database) in its release year, as a ratio:

1. Dr. No $11.79
2. Goldfinger $5.00
3. From Russia With Love $4.96
4. On her Majesty's Secret Service $2.88
5. Thunderball $2.21
6. GoldenEye $1.96
7. Diamonds Are Forever $1.65
8. Octopussy $1.59
9. Skyfall $1.54
10. For Your Eyes Only $1.29
11. Casino Royale (2006) $1.25
12. The Living Daylights $1.16
13. The Man with the Golden Gun $1.16
14. Licence to Kill $1.13
15. A View to a Kill $1.09
16. Never Say Never Again $1.03
17. Live and Let Die $1.02
18. Tomorrow Never Dies $0.96
19. Die Another Day $0.92
20. Quantum of Solace $0.90
21. You Only Live Twice $0.90
22. Spectre $0.82
23. The Spy Who Loved Me $0.78
24. Moonraker $0.78

And here's the list comparing Bond titles' profitability (revenue over budget):

1. Dr. No $62.74
2. Goldfinger $49.95
3. From Russia With Love $39.45
4. Thunderball $25.67
5. Live and Let Die $23.11
6. Diamonds Are Forever $16.11
7. The Man with the Golden Gun $13.94
8. The Spy Who Loved Me $13.25
9. On her Majesty's Secret Service $12.61
10. You Only Live Twice $11.75
11. For Your Eyes Only $6.98
12. Octopussy $6.82
13. Moonraker $6.19
14. GoldenEye $6.07
15. Skyfall $5.54
16. A View to a Kill $5.08
17. Licence to Kill $4.88
18. The Living Daylights $4.78
19. Never Say Never Again $4.44
20. Casino Royale (2006) $3.99
21. Spectre $3.59
22. Die Another Day $3.09
23. Tomorrow Never Dies $3.03
24. Quantum of Solace $2.93

The average profitability for all Bond films is $4.81, substantially better than the average for all the 2,358 movies in my dbase from 1924 to 2021, which is $3.81, and the rule of thumb break-even for producers is revenues that hit 2x budget, so even the lowly Quantum of Solace, while it lagged the dbase average, yet still put some money in producers' pockets.

At the end of the day, raw revenue numbers are important for several reasons - they give us an idea what people are talking about (since the higher the revenue, the more people who saw it and talked about it); and they also give an indication what the audience market might be - if lots of people are watching this kind of movie, look for more of this kind of movie. My interest in better understanding profitability came in part from musing about how so many great movies did not do great box office, while some silly movies have made craptons of profit. But, beyond that, profitability gives us keener insight into the process of movie-making, especially when we can observe, for example, consistencies in profitability from installment to installment within a franchise; or wild discrepancies among movie titles within a genre - what did one movie get so right while another similar movie got so wrong? Etc., that kind of thing.