BOND GETS BACKUP CATCHING THE YOUNG HALLE BERRY, HIP VIDEO GAME KICK IN.

Byline: Greg Hernandez Staff Writer

Saturation on MTV, a new video game and the addition of Halle Berry all contributed to make the first James Bond film of the 21st century, ``Die Another Day,'' a big hit with younger moviegoers.

The new Bond movie opened at $47 million to score the biggest debut ever for a Bond film, according to final box office figures released on Monday. It easily surpassed 1999's ``The World is Not Enough,'' which opened at $35.5 million, and it held off the second weekend of ``Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,'' which had debuted with $88.4 million and had a second weekend gross of $42.3 million.

Most crucial to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio behind 20 Bond films over four decades, was that a solid 40 percent of the movie's audience was under the age of 25.

``It was a big piece of our marketing campaigns to try and attract a younger audience,'' MGM Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer Chris McGurk said Monday. ``If you look at the exit polls, the younger audience came out, and they enjoyed the movie tremendously.''

McGurk said the new film was designed to have a younger, more energetic flair to it as the filmmakers and the studio sought to capture the essential elements that have made the franchise so successful but to also make it more exciting for the younger audience who make up a majority of the people going to the movies most often these days.

``MGM was counting on getting this 25-and-under group,'' said Robert Bucksbaum, president of the box office analysis firm Reel Source Inc. ``It means everything for the life of this franchise.''

Among the marketing efforts thought to have contributed to the younger audience was a widely publicized image of co-star Berry emerging from the ocean in a bikini, evoking a similar image of original ``Bond girl'' Ursula Andress four decades earlier in ``Dr. No.''

The casting of Berry as a CIA agent named Jinx and essentially giving her co-star status in the marketing campaign was seen as a major plus by industry experts. The actress, who appeared on billboards and posters along with star Pierce Brosnan, is at the peak of her career coming off winning the 2002 best-actress Academy Award for ``Monster's Ball.''

``Halle Berry is a huge star right now,'' Bucksbaum said. ``She was the perfect co-star to complement Bond and added something new to the franchise.''

MGM faced the daunting task of proving that its Bond franchise was indeed still relevant, not simply a relic from the past counting on loyalty from older audiences who got hooked on the series in the days of Sean Connery and then Roger Moore, the actors most associated with the role of Bond until Brosnan took it over in 1995.

The past three movies featuring Brosnan had been the highest-grossing in the Bond series, but there was still a widespread feeling that the franchise needed to be reinvigorated.

Sony's ``XXX'' starring Vin Diesel was seen as a younger and hipper version of the Bond style when it opened with a stellar $44.5 million in August. The film went on to make $141.2 million domestically, and a sequel is planned for release in 2004.

McGurk believes the comparisons of ``XXX'' to Bond only helped to fuel anticipation for ``Die Another Day.''

But it had been three years since the last Bond film hit theaters, and one new blockbuster after another, including ``Spider-Man'' and Harry Potter films, had taken their turns reigning at the megaplex.

``It actually gets tougher now for these older movie franchises to do well because the landscape has changed,'' said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office tracker Exhibitor Relations Inc. ``It was incumbent upon MGM and the filmmakers to make this as relevant to audiences today as the Bond films of the '60s were to their audience in their day, and they did it.''

Other bonuses: The movie's theme song, sung by Madonna, has received heavy play on MTV and a special on the making of the movie also aired on the cable channel. Awareness among the younger set has also been fueled by the assortment of Bond video games that are available in such formats as Playstation2, Xbox and Nintendo.

According to McGurk, nearly 20 million copies of Bond video games, from Goldeneye to the most recent Nightfire, have been sold in the last three years. The trailer for ``Die Another Day'' was featured on Nightfire, which went on sale a few weeks ago.

``For a lot of boys, their frame of reference to Bond is the last video,'' he said.

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) BROSNAN

(2 -- color) BERRY