--- description: The sky's the limit for Skyfall. The 23rd episode in the 50-year James Bond series produced by the Broccoli family, and the third to star... title: Live and Let Fly: ‘Skyfall’ Breaks the Bond Barrier image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltaff020b85ce6fbe3/698a8f6d457a52f715d7007f/b23_12649_crop_r.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # Live and Let Fly: 'Skyfall' Breaks the Bond Barrier by [TIME Staff](/author/time-staff/) Nov 11, 2012 11:02 PM CUT  Daniel Craig stars as James Bond in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Columbia Pictures/EON Productionsí action adventure SKYFALL. Daniel Craig stars as James Bond in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Columbia Pictures/EON Productionsí action adventure SKYFALL.Francois Duhamel—Skyfall ©2012 Danjaq, LLC, United Artists Corporation, Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. by [TIME Staff](/author/time-staff/) Nov 11, 2012 11:02 PM CUT The sky’s the limit for _Skyfall_. The 23rd episode in the 50-year [James Bond](http://topics.time.com/james-bond/ "undefined") series produced by the Broccoli family, and the third to star Daniel Craig as 007, earned $87.8 million at North American theaters this weekend, according to preliminary studio estimates, for the year’s fourth strongest opening, after _The Avengers_, _The Dark Knight Rises_ and _The Hunger Games_. Celebrating the franchise’s golden anniversary in style — with plenty of gelt — the new movie added a hefty four-day domestic take ($90 million, including Thursday-evening IMAX screenings) to its 17-day foreign revenue of $428.6 million, giving it a $518.6 million worldwide gross. More than any other Bond film, _Skyfall_ is a windfall. **(LIST:** [**50 Things You Didn’t Know About James Bond**](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/10/04/james-bond-declassified-50-things-you-didnt-know-about-007/ "undefined")**)** On a weekend when business jumped about 20% from the same time last year, most of the popular pictures were aimed at adults. The _Skyfall_ audience, which proclaimed its favor with an “A” rating in the CinemaScore survey of early attendees, trended more mature than the average first-weekend blockbuster crowd: 75% were over the age of 25\. Between _Skyfall_, _Flight_, _Argo_ and _Taken 2_, four of the weekend’s top five grossers all held well with older moviegoers. The same was true for the big limited-release debut, [Steven Spielberg](http://topics.time.com/steven-spielberg/ "undefined")‘s _Lincoln_, which found fully two-thirds of its patrons among the 35-plus set. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, and dramatizing the sixteenth president’s push to ratify the anti-slavery amendment, _Lincoln_ scored a sensational $900,000 at just 11 theaters and matched _Skyfall_ with an “A” CinemaScore. It opens wider on Friday. **(READ: Corliss’s** [**review of** **_Lincoln_**](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/11/08/lincoln-spielbergs-urgent-civics-lesson/?iid=ent-main-belt "undefined")**)** \[**UPDATE**: Final figures released Monday gave _Skyfall_ an even loftier $88.4 million for the domestic weekend. Bond 23 earned another $9.3 million on Monday, for a four-day North American total of $101.9 million. _Lincoln_ also topped its Sunday estimate with $944,308,\] Meanwhile, the very young stuck with _Wreck-It Ralph_, the intergenerational video-game animated feature that earned $33.1 million for second place. At $93.7 million in week two, _Ralph_ is nearly on the pace of another non-Pixar Disney cartoon, the 2010 _Tangled_, which amassed $96.6 million in its first 10 days and went on to gross $200 million in North America and nearly $400 million abroad. Kids this weekend also kept the Adam Sandler animated feature _Hotel Transylvania_ in the top 10 well beyond Halloween. No surprise that Sandler has a sequel in the works for what is the fall’s biggest hit so far — until _Skyfall_‘s numbers pass it, and until teens return to the multiplexes next weekend, in droves, for the fifth and final episode of author Stephenie Meyer’s vampire-love _Twilight Saga_. **(READ: Mary Pols’** [**review of** **_Wreck-It Ralph_**](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/11/01/wreck-it-ralph-toy-story-with-avatars/ "undefined")**)** Neither Sandler nor Meyer had been born when James Bond made his movie debut in _Dr. No_, the first of six films in the Bond-Broccoli canon starring Sean Connery. Made for $1 million, _Dr. No_ cleared $16.1 million in the States and $59.6 million worldwide, [according to a helpful list on The Numbers website](http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/series/JamesBond.php "undefined"), and those figures were just appetizers. The third Bond, _Goldfinger_ in 1964, tripled the domestic take ($51.1 million) and more than doubled the global gross ($124.9 million); and the fourth, the 1965 _Thunderball_, earned $63.6 million in North America and $141.2 worldwide. That may not seem like a huge haul, but in real dollars it’s real money — about $1.1 billion today. On[ Box Office Mojo’s chart of all-time domestic box-office winners adjusted for inflation](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm "undefined"), _Thunderball_ ranks a lofty 28th, sandwiched between two billion-dollar titles: this year’s _The Avengers_ and the 2008 _The Dark Knight_. **(READ:** [**Corliss on the James Bond franchise at 50**](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/10/05/the-james-bond-films-at-50/ "undefined")**)** With Roger Moore replacing Connery for seven Bond films between 1973’s _Live and Let Die_ and the 1985 _A View to a Kill_, the worldwide take hovered between $150 million and $210 million (except for the floppish _The Man With the Golden Gun_ in 1974, at $97.6 million). Two late-’80s Bonds with Timothy Dalton, _The Living Daylights_ and _License to Kill_, maintained the global average of the Moore movies; then the worldwide figures skyrocketed, to between $340 million and $432 million, in the four Bonds starring Pierce Brosnan from 1995 (_GoldenEye_) to 2002 (_Die Another Day_). The 2006 _Casino Royale_, which rebooted the series with Craig as a rougher, action-star 007, earned $596.4 million worldwide, and the 2008 _Quantum of Solace_ $591.7 million. _Skyfall_ has passed the half-billion-dollar threshold in its third week. **(SEE:** [**Every James Bond opening scene — ranked**](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/11/09/every-james-bond-opening-scene-ranked/ "undefined")**)** What’s amazing about this run of hits, which cover half of the century-long history of feature films, is its consistency. Only two films in the series (the sixth, _On Her Majesty’s_ [_Secret Service_](http://topics.time.com/secret-service/ "undefined"), with Australian-no-star George Lazenby filling in for Connery, and _The Man With the Golden Gun_) suffered revenue drops of more than 20% from their predecessors. Most of the other Bonds made a stately march upward at the box office, earning in the mid-hundreds of millions, even as their budgets ballooned into the $200-million range. Yet the recent Bond films never vaulted into the billion-dollar stratosphere occupied by contemporary action fantasies such as the Harry Potter, _Pirates of the Caribbean_, Batman, _Transformers_ or _Avengers_ franchises. _Skyfall_, with mostly rapturous reviews (a 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the same as _Lincoln_) and an Oscar-winning director (Sam Mendes) and costars (Judi Dench and Javier Bardem), could be the first Bond film to flirt with a 10-figure worldwide gross — a platinum prize for its golden anniversary. **(READ: Corliss’s** [**review of** **_Skyfall_**](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/11/09/skyfall-bond-and-bardem-go-boom/?iid=ent-main-belt "undefined")**)** In indie openings, [_A Royal Affair_](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/11/08/a-royal-affair-the-enlightenment-brings-sexy-back/?iid=ent-main-belt "undefined"), Denmark’s official submission in the Academy Award foreign-language category, earned $40,000 at seven locations — a so-so number that may reflect all the competition for adult audiences among the mainstream releases. The climate-change doc [_Chasing Ice_](http://lightbox.time.com/2012/03/12/chasing-ice/ "undefined") cashed in an impressive $21,000 at New York’s Cinema Village Theater and will go wider next week. Distributors for the French-Canadian romance [_Café de Flore_](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/11/09/cafe-de-flore-twin-flames-in-an-enlightening-film/?iid=ent-main-belt "undefined"), which opened in New York City after a one-week postponement for superstorm Sandy, have not yet reported this weekend’s box-office stats. Here are the Sunday estimates of this weekend’s top-grossing pictures in North American theaters, as reported by [Box Office Mojo](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/ "undefined"): 1\. _Skyfall_, $87.8 million, first weekend; $90 million, first four days 2\. _Wreck-It Ralph_, $33.1 million; $93.7 million, second week 3\. _Flight_, $15.1 million; $47.8 million, second week 4\. _Argo_, $6.7 million; $85.7 million, fifth week 5\. _Taken 2_, $4 million; $131.3 million, sixth week 6\. _Here Comes the Boom_, $2.55 million; $39.1 million, fifth week 7\. _Cloud Atlas_, $2.53 million; $22.7 million, third week 8\. _Pitch Perfect_, $2.5 million; $59 million, seventh week 9\. _The Man With the Iron Fists_, $2.49 million; $12.7 million, second week 10\. _Hotel Transylvania_, $2.35 million; $140.9 million, seventh week ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7120689/live-and-let-fly-skyfall-breaks-the-bond-barrier/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7120689/live-and-let-fly-skyfall-breaks-the-bond-barrier/"},"headline":"Live and Let Fly: 'Skyfall' Breaks the Bond Barrier","datePublished":"2012-11-11T23:02:10.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T05:55:37.880Z","description":"The sky's the limit for Skyfall. 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