I'm not sure you can solely lay the gap between QoS and SF at the feet of MGM's troubles. It was a factor for sure, but I also think Eon were also burned by how poorly received QoS was. Partly that was down to the strike, but I think they realised they'd rushed to get a second Craig film out and paid the price. As such I suspect there was no way you'd get another film in 2 years, you'd be talking 3 at least, which gives us SF in 2011, and then you factor in the other element. 2012 was the golden anniversary of the Bond films, so if you're looking at 2011 for SF what's another year to hit the 50th?
I think it's pretty clear now that trying to turn a modern Bond film around in 2 years is a push, you can do it on occasion, but it isn't sustainable for every film.
The one gap that should never have existed was between Spectre and NTTD, as you say. Actually I'll add this into my list of mistakes made by Eon. Hiring Boyle, a man who was always going to want creative control, was a terrible idea (and on the flipside Boyle signing up was a bad move on his part because everyone knew Eon wouldn't give him complete creative control.) At the very least if they'd either let him make the film (unlikely) or better yet not hired him in the first place, then we'd have had NTTD in 2019.
I guess the upside of how things turned out is that it's only four and a half years since the last new Bond film came out, because we might be here complaining that it's over six years since the last film came out, because I think we were probably always going to wind up here with Amazon, or someone.
