Star Trek 4 (1 Viewer)

[Osato]

You might check out the new show Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I really like it! It's almost as spectacular as the recent movies, and most of the screenplays for Strange New Worlds are really good.

I’ve heard it’s been decent. I may have to pick it up on Blu-ray. I did see the pilot on YouTube when Paramount posted it for a week.

I’ve heard there’s a lot of humor and also not as much respect for command and the captain. Lots of smart comments etc.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

A lower cost Trek movie might not be realistic.

Chris Pine himself has advocated for more realistic expectations.

 

[Osato]

Chris Pine himself has advocated for more realistic expectations.

Star Trek 5 remake!!!

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

That’s fine, but the point still stands. Should they even try to make a feature film? Because clearly they can not get their act together to make one.

There's no way they could afford this cast for anything on the TV/streaming side.

In a show like "Picard", Patrick Stewart is the only movie star salary. Anything with the Kelvin timeline cast is going to be many magnitudes more expensive.

If they want to make Star Trek movies that are profitable with $200-300 million or so in domestic box office, they'd be better off telling a new story with a new starship and a cast of affordable unknowns.

 

[Tino]

2016's Star Trek Beyond cost 185 million + c. 75 million for advertising and overhead, which gives a total cost c. $260m.

Worldwide box office $344 million, of which about half comes back to the studio, or 172m.

So a loss of almost $90 million, which at best has maybe been cut in half by streaming and blu-ray sales. But it still seems like they lost at least $40 million on Star Trek Beyond.

Meanwhile the stars have become more expensive, and competition with things like Marvel movies means that lots of cgi spectacle and huge set pieces have become even more important. A lower cost Trek movie might not be realistic.

Paramount's inability to figure this out is in part the economics of Trek movies.

The new Dr. Strange movie had a production budget of $200 million, but had a worldwide box office of 955m. So the costs are similar to Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but the box office is likely to be about a third of that level.

Break even cost on huge tent pole titles like Star Trek are usually 2-3 times their budget with brings us to about $500 million as the BE point.

So the film lost considerably more than $40 million. More like $150-200 million.

 

[Jason_V]

There's no way they could afford this cast for anything on the TV/streaming side.

In a show like "Picard", Patrick Stewart is the only movie star salary. Anything with the Kelvin timeline cast is going to be many magnitudes more expensive.

If they want to make Star Trek movies that are profitable with $200-300 million or so in domestic box office, they'd be better off telling a new story with a new starship and a cast of affordable unknowns.

What I was saying is that maybe it’s time to forget the movie theater. Make a movie for streaming…doesn’t need the entire cast or anything like that.

Bottom line…no one has been able to get this project anywhere near the finish line. Not even close. Might as well forget the big screen.

 

[benbess]

Break even cost on huge tent pole titles like Star Trek are usually 2-3 times their budget with brings us to about $500 million as the BE point.

So the film lost considerably more than $40 million. More like $150-200 million.

If Paramount lost $150 million on Star Trek Beyond, then it's no wonder they can't figure out how to do another one with this cast.

As has been talked about here many times, the "money people" keep wanting Star Trek to move beyond its base, to the point of them almost saying: "Look, it's less like old Star Trek. Think instead that it's almost like Iron Man flying, and it is like Chris Pine on a motorcycle!" The relentless quest for that bigger audience, which never succeeds nearly as well as they think it will, has for me partially diluted what makes it Trek to begin with.

Josh mentions that Chris Pine is open to a less costly Trek, but as far as I know Pine's not willing to go lower on his c.$8 million or so payday. So if the salaries stay the same, or go higher, then the FX budget and other elements would have to get slashed. But I don't see how that's going to sell as a movie in today's mega-spectacular movie environment. JJ Abrams is also not likely to lower his take as a producer, which is also a problem for the total cost structure of a Trek motion picture.

Overall, after thinking about it for many years, I'm just not that fond of this whole 3-movie Trek reboot. In the first one, Pine was sometimes more like a frat guy than what Shatner brought to the role. Plus they destroyed the planet Vulcan, which I could never quite forgive. In Trek into Darkness the white British Cumberbatch Khan, with his "magic super-blood," was from my pov a poorly-written reboot of Wrath of Khan. And Beyond was my least favorite of the three.

Bottom line: Do we need keep rebooting Kirk and Spock? I myself am weary of that when it comes to the movies.

Although that being said, I really like the new Spock played by Ethan Peck in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. As most of you probably know, Ethan Peck is the grandson of Gregory Peck. But imho ideally he should be the last of the Spock reboots. It's time to move on to other characters and other time eras in the Trek universe. And if that's not possible for the movies, then maybe it's time to stop making mediocre and money-losing Trek films.

 

[Osato]

Star Trek 5 remake!!!

Laurence Luckinbill as Sarek!

 

[Malcolm R]

Paramount has bungled the theatrical side of the franchise so badly they should probably just give it up. All the false starts, delays, allowing the cast contracts to expire, etc.

Or perhaps they need to take another run at The Next Generation with a new cast playing those characters on film.

An original film with new characters might be fun, but I'm not sure how a completely original ST film unrelated to past films/characters would fare at the box office.

 

[Sam Favate]

Or perhaps they need to take another run at The Next Generation with a new cast playing those characters on film.

They have the original NG cast still playing those characters! They’re all going to be regulars on Picard S3 in 2023.

 

[Tino]

They have the original NG cast still playing those characters! They’re all going to be regulars on Picard S3 in 2023.

Whoa Sam. Spoilers dude. I didn’t know that.

 

[Sam Favate]

Whoa Sam. Spoilers dude. I didn’t know that.

This has been very big news for months!

Terry Matalas Talks TNG Reunion On ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Season 3, More Legacy Characters, And Possible Spinoff

The executive producer sees hope for 'Enterprise' fans too.

trekmovie.com

There’s even a trailer:

 

[Tino]

This has been very big news for months!

Terry Matalas Talks TNG Reunion On ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Season 3, More Legacy Characters, And Possible Spinoff

The executive producer sees hope for 'Enterprise' fans too.

trekmovie.com

There’s even a trailer:

For others maybe. I’ve avoided all that. Anyway, No worries.

 

[Alex...]

Star Trek 4 Writers Detail Their Scrapped Plans​

 

[Jake Lipson]

It is important to note that those guys were on Star Trek 4 when S.J. Clarkson was going to direct it. They don't seem to have had any involvement with the version that Matt Shakman recently departed. They are now working on The Rings of Power for Amazon.

 

[Alex...]

 

[benbess]

From that article....

"Why Star Trek Movies Cost So Much
Weintraub discussed a similar approach with Shakman, saying "I actually think that the way forward on a Star Trek movie is maybe to make one that's like $30 to $50 million, that's hard sci-fi, aimed right at the fans." The director posited that "In our day and age now, any time you go to space in a movie it's expensive. When you're flying around in the Enterprise, even if you're going to land and be in one place for a long time, it's still pretty expensive."

Shakman went on to explain that the film he would've made would likely still have been a "large tent-pole film," thanks to factors including the franchise's expansive, well-known cast which features Pine, Zoe Saldaña, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho, and more. He also shared high praise for the way that Star Trek (2009) director J.J. Abrams was able to bring more fans into the franchise with the scale of his films, saying:

"I think that one of the things that JJ [Abrams] has done so well is that, he'll be the first to admit, he didn't grow up being a giant Star Trek fan even though he's a fan now. But he was a huge Star Wars fan. So I think in rebooting it with Chris Pine and Zoe [Saldaña] and Zach [Quinto], he brought a little bit of Star Wars to it, which I think helped expand its audience, in terms of the scope and the scale of it and the energy of it. I think that that certainly is the goal is to find more and more of an audience for Star Trek. But I am, like you, a huge fan of that, and it was a real shame that I couldn't make the timing work on that."

Star Trek 4 is still in development, so stay tuned at Collider for further updates on the Kelvin-verse movie."


The thoughts expressed in this article don't really make sense from my pov. When you include the producers and the director, along with all of those expensive actors, the salaries alone for another Kelvin Trek movie would add up to about $30 million, and that's before you shot any footage. Chris Pine's salary for the upcoming D&D movie is said to be about $11 million, and so that's his regular price these days. Just because something is "hard science" (which Trek has only rarely been throughout its long history) doesn't mean that it's cheap. Finally, the quoted paragraph, in a seemly contradictory way, then praises the epic Star Wars-like quality of the 2009 reboot, and how it drew in more fans. I do agree that JJ Abrams clearly wasn't a Trek fan, and from my pov he couldn't quite figure out how to make a really good Trek movie.

The bottom line is that the last big budget Trek movie probably lost around $100 million dollars, and maybe more. They obviously need to do something different to make this work as a profit-making movie. I personally have been enjoying the TV shows more lately, including Discovery and Strange New Worlds, which seem to me like really good Trek. Since those shows have almost movie-level production values anyway, I'm good with Trek on tv. For gosh sakes, I hope studio doesn't try to reboot Kirk and Spock yet again. But these shallow IP-centric corporate suits seem to have trouble getting past that.

 

[Jason_V]

Eh, Star Trek 4. Trek will never be Marvel or Star Wars in the movie theater, so stop. Small, inexpensive cast, great story, low budget. The barrier to profitability is much lower that way.

Also: they need to stop with announcing directors and release dates only to have the director walk away or the release date disappear. I refuse to get my hopes up on any announcements until my butt is sitting in the theater on opening night to see the movie.

 

[BobO'Link]

Let me know when they finally decide the way forward is not making just another "dumb SF action film" like the prior 3 from Abrams and I might be interested.

I'm not much of a fan of Discovery yet it's been much better since they left the TOS era behind by jumping into the future and is, IMHO, better than any of the 3 "Kelvin" movies.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

So, a few questions, is anyone in this thread with an interest in a fourth Star Trek film under the age of 30? I can say I am not and I am unsure if there is anybody under 30 that has an interest in Star Trek. In fact, it may be just for people over 40.

Second, does Kelvin timeline just mean they get to remake old storylines with a slightly different twist? Isn't that what they have been doing with these newer Trek pictures?

Third, movies based on a TV show from the 1960s just seem to be something that you could now almost say only has niche appeal, wouldn't you say?

Fourth, I think there is an even smaller audience for anything related to Picard era Star Trek, so probably no reason to do anything involving that.

Now, I am a big fan of the original show, loved watching it as a boy, I am in my mid 50s and so love anything with Kirk and Spock. I watched several episodes of Strange New Worlds, which I hoped would be an entry point back into the Star Trek universe but...I personally, did not find the show to be that good. So, never finished the series.

Would I buy a ticket to a new Chris Pine Kirk Star Trek? Sure, I would. I don't want to see a remake of an old storyline and would prefer something like a character based entry that does not have to have crazy effects sequences as what made this show worth watching was the interaction between the characters and how they would problem solve together. Not how much stuff you blew up.

The last Pine led Trek movie was not very good and that was mainly because it seemed more about special effects than anything else.

So, my last question would be, these are basically fan driven shows and films, why not make them for those fans instead of trying to appeal to people with little to no interest in Star Trek?