Yet the deal that studios are hotly chasing is not very profitable.
Under its previous agreement, Sony paid 50 percent of the production costs for “Spectre” — which totaled some $250 million after accounting for government incentives — but
received only 25 percent of certain profits, once costs were recouped. Sony also shouldered tens of millions of dollars in marketing and
had to give MGM a piece of the profit from non-Bond films Sony had in its own pipeline, including “22 Jump Street.”
In a 2014 email stolen by hackers and widely published online, Andrew Gumpert, who then oversaw business affairs for Sony, figured that the studio would realize about $38 million in profit if “Spectre” performed as “Skyfall” did. And “Spectre” did not, taking in $881 million, about 20 percent less than “Skyfall,” which was released in 2012.
Why, then, do studios want to distribute Bond so badly? Bragging rights, mostly. Having a Bond movie on the schedule guarantees at least one hit in a business where there is almost no sure thing.
Sony, whose contract to market and distribute the films expired in 2015, gave its presentation on a recreated set from “Dr. No.”
www.nytimes.com
Here is an article from Variety about No Time to Die to put things into perspective about budget costs and breaking even.
While that film cost $250m to produce, Variety is estimating it will need to make between 800-900m to break even. So that's between 3.2 and 3.6 times its production budget. Not quite 4x, but close on the high end.
Using James Bond as an example for anything is pointless. Barbara Broccoli has a bunch of requirements, huge productions costs, huge marketing budgets, first dibs into revenue, dibs into revenue into other franchises… basically whoever offers the most concessions gets the rights to make James Bond.
Uncharted doesn’t need anything close to this. There’s literally only one company to feed. Sony.