| Category: Recreation: Movies |
Paramount’s experiment to turn Star Trek into an A-level blockbuster franchise was a resounding failure, and it’s no more likely to succeed in today’s unforgiving theatrical marketplace.
It has been just over four years since Star Trek Beyond bombed in global theatrical release, earning solid reviews and decent buzz but just $158 million domestic and $338 million worldwide on a $185 million budget. Since then, we’ve seen stops and starts, false alarms, and related developments concerning where the franchise might go next. But, as we find out that new Paramount PGRE +2.8% film chief Emma Watts (who left Fox after the Disney DIS -0.7% sale) is attempting to figure out where to go from here, it’s time to admit that, in the broad scheme of things, Paramount’s attempts to make Star Trek into a blockbuster movie franchise was a failure. What was feared in 2008 and was confirmed in 2013 remains even truer in 2020 and beyond. Star Trek is never going to be a top-tier global box office powerhouse.
There are currently three different Star Trek movies in some form of development at Paramount. We’ve got a straight-up Star Trek 4 which will presumably reunite the Bad Robot reboot cast (Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, John Cho and Simon Pegg) and possibly bring back Chris Hemsworth as Kirk’s late father. That one stalled when Pine and Hemsworth held out for the paycheck which was promised before Star Trek Beyond bombed ($338 million on a $185 million budget). We’ve got the Noah Hawley-directed flick, of which little is known beyond its plot allegedly concerning a virus wiping out much of the universe, which might not play very well at the present time (or ever within the optimistic Star Trek mythology). And we have Quentin Tarantino’s Star Trek film, which may involve 1930’s gangster tropes.
One of the first posts I ever wrote on my personal blog was one questioning why Paramount was spending $150 million on a Star Trek reboot considering no Star Trek movie had ever earned more than $109 million in unadjusted domestic grosses. Sure, the brand has proven its worth on television, while the feature films have been reliable movers in the post-theatrical afterlife. It still seemed a huge risk to spend Transformers money on a franchise that was proven to be a comparatively small-scale theatrical performer. Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan both broke the opening weekend box office record in 1979 ($11 million) and 1982 ($14 million), but the films had generally stalled out at over/under $75 million domestic even as the budgets for the sequels went up.
The Motion Picture earned $82 million domestic while The Voyage Home (a newbie-friendly comedy that sent the Enterprise crew back to 1987) earned $109 million. First Contact, a PG-13 (shocking at the time) and action-driven thriller involving Picard facing off against the Borg, opened with $30 million (a record for Trek at that time) and ended with $90 million domestic on a $45 million budget. Two entries later, the also PG-13 and action-powered Nemesis would earn lousy reviews and outright bomb, earning $43 million domestic (and $67 million worldwide) on a $60 million budget. Yet now, seven years later, Paramount would spend $150 million on a reboot for a franchise whose biggest global entry (First Contact) had earned… $150 million. Even Star Trek: The Motion Picture earned “just” $139 million global on a then-huge $35 million budget.
J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, starring sexy/cool young actors as the marquee characters from the original show (and first six movies), opened in May of 2009 amid rave reviews and white-hot buzz with $79 million. It legged out to $256 million domestic, which is, even adjusted for inflation, the biggest Trek haul ($313 million adjusted versus $298 million for The Motion Picture) for a Trek movie. The film still earned only $385 million worldwide, again showing the franchise’s weak drawing power outside of North America. But that was okay, because everyone like Star Trek and surely the sequel was going to break out here, right? Well, in retrospect Batman Begins ($205 million domestic and $371 million worldwide on a $150 million budget) leading to The Dark Knight ($533 million/$1.004 billion) gave false hope to the next generation of franchise relaunches.
At least part of the appeal of was that Star Trek gave audiences the kind of high-flying sci-fi swashbuckler thrills that many felt they didn’t get from George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels or (relatively speaking) Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This was four years after Revenge of the Sith and there was no reason to assume that there’d ever be more Star Wars movies. Moreover, Star Trek was one of the very biggest, in terms of size, scale and fantastical ambition, movies of that year, behind only Paramount’s own Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (which had earned $409 million domestic and $867 million that same summer). The previous year’s Iron Man was a comparatively smaller-scale action flick that had earned “just” $585 million worldwide while The Incredible Hulk outright bombed.
In 2009, Star Trek was the closest thing to Star Wars and one of the biggest franchises in scale and size. But by 2013, when Star Trek Into Darkness opened to mostly positive reviews, the MCU was one the verge of upping the scale of even their non-Avengers movies while Fast & Furious had become an A-level action ensemble franchise. With Disney buying Lucasfilm in late 2012, we were on the verge of getting a sequel to Return of the Jedi featuring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford reprising their marquee roles. Audiences now had Fast & Furious, The Avengers and Michael Bay’s ridiculously huge Transformers movies. Oh, and the Jedi were about to return. Star Trek Into Darkness earned $228 million domestic and (thanks to a 3-D conversion) $467 million worldwide on a $190 million budget.
That wasn’t big enough considering the budget and it wasn’t remotely the level of “breakout sequel” that Paramount was hoping for after Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (from $654 million in 2003 to $1.066 billion in 2006), The Dark Knight ($371 million in 2005/$1.004 billion in 2008) and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($708 million in 2007/$836 million in 2009). That 18% jump for Transformers 2 was smaller than the 21% jump for Star Trek Into Darkness, but Transformers earned $708 million on a $150 million budget. The Michael Bay series also jumped 33% domestically between installments and the third film (the first in 3-D) would top $1 billion in 2011. Iron Man 3, opening just before Star Trek Into Darkness, doubled the global gross of Iron Man 2 ($623 million in 2010/$1.215 billion in 2013).
Three years later, Star Trek Beyond would open amid a summer of “once were giant” franchise relaunches (Independence Day: Resurgence, Jason Bourne, Ghostbusters: Answer the Call, X-Men: Apocalypse, Alice Through the Looking Glass, TMNT: Out of the Shadows). In a world where Fast & Furious delivered a diverse and eclectic ensemble hero cast fighting the good fight, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy both offered swashbuckling sci-fi adventure and the MCU had upped the scale to the point where GotG, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War were some of the “biggest” movies around, Star Trek Beyond had no unique commercial value beyond “Hey, it’s another Star Trek movie.” It would earn just $158 million domestic and $338 million on a still-too-expensive $185 million budget. The Star Trek blockbuster experiment had failed.
Star Trek: Discovery, Picard and the recently-launched animated Lower Decks are keeping the IP alive on TV. Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville, pitched as “Family Guy meets Star Trek,” quickly became a sincere heir to the throne, especially for those who want their Star Trek to have more optimistic exploration and sci-fi adventure and less dark conspiracies and blockbuster action. Maybe cheaper Star Trek movies, films that could be successes at $300 million worldwide, could work. What was true in 2009 is now even more true today as the very idea of theatrical exhibition is in peril. The experiment of Bad Robot and Paramount’s initial Star Trek relaunch was a failure. Could spending A-level blockbuster bucks and offering A-level blockbuster thrills turn Star Trek into an A-level blockbuster franchise? The answer, three times in a row, was “No.”
~ Via Forbes |
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