Bond or bust: Spectre casts a long shadow over the multiplexes

In news that's unlikely to trouble anyone who doesn't have the likes of Harvey Weinstein on their Christmas card list, spy film Spectre (about which more, much more, later) had a very decent opening day.

The Bond pic took £4.1/€5.7 million in the UK box office in 647 venues across the UK in its opening previews on Monday night. The figures came in just 15 minutes after the world premiere kicked off in London’s Royal Albert Hall.

The figures are well short of Skyfall's opening day (it took £6.2m/€8.6m) but thanks to the odd opening day, most cinemas only managed to show it twice, whereas Skyfall had a full day's run at a spy-hungry audience.

Early doors
So why did Spectre decide to go for an early-doors premiere? Marketers will mutter the words "disruption" while tapping their noses knowingly. Spectre's launch certainly derailed the typical media build-up, with many journalists seeing the film late last week and posting online reviews at the weekend, which kept the anticipation stoked over a weekend rather than a day or two.

A much more obvious reason, though, is school holidays – the mid-term break releases an extra mass audience for daytime viewing who are usually locked in a room struggling with algebra and the use of metaphor in Shakespeare. Releasing a film on a Monday to capitalise on this is a pretty logical move.

The Bond franchise knows probably better than anyone how to work up a PR storm, and when, in a recent interview, Daniel Craig threw a sweary cloud over his participation in any future Bond films, you couldn't help but wonder was the whole thing a plant. It neatly kept the news filled with Bond-centric stories, and conveniently reheated the debate over who could or should play everyone's favourite misogynist killer.

No competition
What's even more interesting, though, is the reaction of the wider film market. Looking at this week's reviews, not one feature film had the stones to go up against Bond at the box office, even five days after its initial release. All other film releases reviewed this week are limited-release documentaries, with no fresh films competing with Spectre for the weekend.

Had Spectre opened on Friday, this might have seemed a safe if sensible move. But with Bond now up and running, surely there is room for at least one new film to compete with viewers' attention? And judging by Monday night's opening figures, nearly everyone has already seen it anyway.