Contrary to reports, the James Bond price tag was likely well in excess of $20 million. (Photo by Greg Williams/Eon Productions via Getty Images)
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Recent reports that tech titan Amazon paid a paltry $20 million to buy the rights to the James Bond franchise seem incredibly wide of the mark. There is good reason for this.
For the best part of the past decade Amazon has been on a quest to take on Hollywood’s establishment and it hasn’t cut any corners. Back in 2017 it paid an estimated $250 million to buy the television rights to The Lord of the Rings and as this report revealed, it then spent more than $800 million on two seasons of spinoff show The Rings of Power which plays exclusively on its Prime Video platform.
The spending spree didn’t stop there and in March 2022 Amazon paid $8.5 billion for storied movie studio MGM despite it reportedly being valued at between $3.5 billion and $4 billion.
This gave Amazon access to Bond – the studio’s biggest star – but it couldn’t freely develop the franchise as longtime stewards Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson remained in charge. So Amazon had to whip out its wallet again and in February this year handed them an estimated $1 billion to cede creative control.
Like every good spy story, there’s a twist in the tale and earlier today it was claimed that Amazon actually paid just $20 million for the rights. In fact that’s far from the case.
The reports were based on a comment in the latest financial statements of Eon Productions which is owned by Broccoli and Wilson. Its filings state that “on 20 February 2025, the company entered into an agreement for the sale of its interest in the Bond franchise, all associated assets as well as its subsidiary companies, B24 Limited and B25 Limited. The total consideration for the sale amounted to $20 million.”
The devil is in the detail and it was no accident that the statement referred to the company’s “interest in the Bond franchise” rather than the rights to it. That’s because Eon doesn’t own the rights and therefore couldn’t have received $20 million for them.
The ownership structure of the Bond rights is almost as Byzantine as the schemes that the super spy’s enemies concoct in an attempt to take him down. It dates back to July 1961 when Barbara’s father, Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli, and his business partner Harry Saltzman bought the rights to Ian Fleming’s Bond novels and established Eon Productions in the United Kingdom to make films about them. United Artists (UA) was initially contracted to finance and distribute the films. That was just the start.
Danjaq has held the James Bond rights since the 1960s.
Bettmann Archive
In 1962 Saltzman and Broccoli’s wives, Dana and Jacqueline founded a company in Switzerland called Danjaq which was named after them and was part of an elaborate, but perfectly legal, tax avoidance structure. This involved Eon’s subsidiaries, such as B24 and B25, making the Bond films in the U.K. and selling them to Danjaq so that they could be distributed by UA or another studio. According to Deadline, Danjaq also got first-dollar gross on the movies meaning that it started collecting before their costs were covered.
The structure ensured that much of the profits from the films ended up in Switzerland where they were taxed at a lower rate than they would have been in the U.K. where Eon is based. In order to carry this out, the 007 trademarks and copyrights were held by Danjaq which gave it control of the finished films.
In 1986 the Broccolis took control of Danjaq making Cubby its sole owner and producer. When he died his step-son Michael Wilson and his daughter Barbara inherited Danjaq and Eon and continued to run the franchise until Amazon made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.
The only other major change came in the 1990s when Danjaq moved to Delaware in the United States. Although Delaware is not a tax shelter, no corporation tax is charged on interest received by companies based there such as Danjaq. It paid production advances to Eon and bought the finished Bond films from it.
All of the income from the Bond films received by Eon and Danjaq is subject to tax in either the U.K. or the U.S. and there is no suggestion that either company has underpaid. They have simply benefited from the tax arrangements on offer there and they have been a dream ticket as the Bond movies are cash cows.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a memo from the infamous 2014 Sony hack revealed that Danjaq banked $109 million from Bond’s 2012 outing Skyfall which alone makes a mockery of the suggestion that the rights to the entire series were sold for just $20 million.
Danjaq’s role appears to have been taken over by London Operations (Photo by Keith Hamshere/Getty Images)
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Skyfall was distributed by Sony and, according to leaked documents it made just $57 million despite covering half of the cost. Danjaq was the real winner so it’s no surprise that the company remained at the heart of the Bond franchise right up to February this year. Eon made the movies but a good deal of the profits ended up in Danjaq which owned the rights while distribution was handled by studios which also financed the productions. MGM got the distribution rights when it bought UA in 1981 and, in turn, Amazon became the ultimate owner of them when it acquired MGM.
In summary, the most valuable assets were the Bond rights which were held by Danjaq and there is little doubt that Amazon has acquired them.
As The Hollywood Reporter explained, over the past month, trademarks for Bond-related names have been filed by a new entity called London Operations, LLC, which shares a Culver City address with Amazon. This suggests that that London Operations has taken over from Danjaq as the owner of the rights to the spy series which makes sense as Amazon would need them in order to ensure that it has creative control.
Accordingly, the bulk of Amazon’s blockbuster payment will have been to Danjaq not Eon. Time will tell whether it pays off.