There have been 25 James Bond movies over the last 58 years (excluding releases in 2021) generating over $17B in inflation adjusted profit. Over these 25 movies there have been six actors portraying James Bond, and the question that often comes up "Who Is James Bond". This analysis is being done for the movie loving fans to help answer that question.
Let us start by looking at Graph 1 which shows the inflation adjusted worldwide box-office take by year. One can see all the movies appear lucrative as the majority exceed $400M in worldwide box-office totals. Additionally, the budget line appears to have no correlation to the box-office totals. Perhaps it is better to review the inflation adjusted profit.
Before diving into the profits let us review a couple of non-financial based graphs. Graph 2 is a quick view on counts of movies by actor. This of course could have drastic impacts on the total profit as we would not expect an actor with one movie to exceed one who has done seven movies. It is clear Connery and Moore have an edge portraying James Bond in seven movies each. The current James Bond, Daniel Craig, has made four James Bond movies through 2020.
Moving on to Graph 3 which covers the IMDB user ratings of various movies. For the James Bond movies they rate Connery and Craig over 7.0 on average out of 10. Similar to the count of movies Roger Moore is right behind with 6.75 average rating of his James Bond roles.
The first of the detailed financials, Graph 4 shows the non-adjusted worldwide box-office take. Daniel Craig easily leads with over $3B, in fact he almost takes in more than the other 21 movies combined. Since these movies span over 58 years this is not quite comparing apples to apples.
In Graph 5 one can see the inflation adjusted profit by actor. Connery far exceeds his counterparts with $5B of inflation adjusted profits followed by Moore at approximately $4B. Lastly, Daniel Craig's box-office profits are approximately $2.75B. It appears Connery is truly the king, but we must remember he did have seven movies versus Craig's four.
The final graph, Graph 6, shows the average inflation adjusted movie profit by actor. In this we have the same reoccurring actors lead the pack: Connery averages $721M per movie, Craig $681M, and Moore at $581M.
At the end of 2020 the actor who is the best James Bond seems clear, Sean Connery. He leads with an average inflation adjusted profit of $721M per movie, first in total inflation adjusted profit of $5B, and the raters at IMDB have his movies ranked second at 7.0 of 10.
It should be noted Craig has a fifth James Bond movie appearing in 2021 and he could still take the role of James Bond more in the future.