Star Trek 4 (1 Viewer)

[SamT]

Make Star Trek: Strange New Worlds movie instead.

 

[jayembee]

I thought they were terrific. I would love to see another film with this cast picking up where Beyond left off. I realize at this point it’s doubtful.

I liked Into Darkness quite a bit. Beyond...not so much, though I certainly didn't hate it, either.

 

[jayembee]

Make Star Trek: Strange New Worlds movie instead.

I'd rather get a 10-hour series every year-to-year-and-a-half than a 2-hour movie every three-or-so years.

"Why not both?" you might ask. Because coordinating the two would be problematic, as the first X-Files movie ably demonstrated.

 

[Sam Favate]

I want SNW to have a long life as a series. The surest way to kill it is to make a film, as much as I would like to see such a film.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I don’t think there’s a theatrical market for such a film, for better or worse.

The budget for a new episode of live action Trek is approximately $8-10 million, putting the season cost at about $80-100 million.

The requirements for big screen productions means that the studio would likely spend twice the season budget at minimum to make a film. So you’re looking at a $200 million production budget.

Then you’re looking at another $100-200 million on advertising.

That brings the break-even number that the film most gross closer to $750 million.

And the film has to gross that in about two weeks before theaters start to drop it.

I don’t see a scenario in today’s market where Trek is no longer uncommon or rare that it could gross three quarters of a billion dollars in ten days.

On the other hand, the Michelle Yeoh movie is a potentially viable model. They can spend $40 million on the streaming movie and the production values will be more than double a single TV episode. The amount spent on promotion will be far less because they’ll be advertising primarily to people who already have the streaming service, on the service. And they won’t need to sell a huge number of tickets in ten days; they’ll just need a percentage of their existing subscribers to watch it.

 

[SamT]

As a casual viewer all I see is that the cast of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds are sympathetic and interesting. They have achieved the rare, once in a life time casting a crew with chemistry. As a casual viewer I couldn't care even a little for any of the cast of the new JJ Abrams Star Trek movies. I just don't care. I don't like them.

So they have something with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds if they use it correctly.

 

[Philip Verdieck]

I think a SNW theatrical film would have a WTF reaction from a lot of non-trekkies. They had 3 movies with a new Kirk & Crew, now they get a new cast, a Captain named Pike, etc.

 

[Sam Favate]

I think a SNW theatrical film would have a WTF reaction from a lot of non-trekkies. They had 3 movies with a new Kirk & Crew, now they get a new cast, a Captain named Pike, etc.

To be fair, the Chris Pine movies, despite there only being three of them, have had a longer lifespan (14 years) than Shatner & Co.’s six films/12 years.

 

[Chip_HT]

I think a SNW theatrical film would have a WTF reaction from a lot of non-trekkies. They had 3 movies with a new Kirk & Crew, now they get a new cast, a Captain named Pike, etc.

It's been 7 years since the last movie, which is the same amount of time that it took to release the three reboot movies. (It also happens to be the same amount of time between Nemesis and the reboot.)

I don't think the non-Trekkie audience is really going to care. If they care enough to be interested in a new movie, they probably already know that there's a bunch of different Star Treks out there. Plus, audiences are getting conditioned to quick reboots -- Spider-Man had three variations across four movies in a ten year span.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I think a SNW theatrical film would have a WTF reaction from a lot of non-trekkies. They had 3 movies with a new Kirk & Crew, now they get a new cast, a Captain named Pike, etc.

I think it would all depend on how they do it. If they do it like the last season of SNW, which tied into all of these elements of the larger Star Trek canon, I could see it being alienating. But if they told a standalone story and didn't delve too deep into the ongoing character arcs, it could work.

But for any Trek movie to be financially viable, it has to be budgeted closer to the TNG movies than to the Kelvin trilogy.

 

[Alex...]

Update

‘Star Trek 4’ Beams Up New Screenwriter: ‘The Flight Attendant’ Co-Creator Steve Yockey (EXCLUSIVE)

Steve Yockey, co-creator of 'The Flight Attendant,' is joining Starfleet as the new screenwriter for 'Star Trek 4.'

variety.com

 

[dpippel]

The cast will be collecting Social Security by the time this film ever gets made. IF it ever gets made.

 

[Osato]

The cast will be collecting Social Security by the time this film ever gets made. IF it ever gets made.

Agreed

 

[Jason_V]

Not to be "that guy," but I fully expected the update to be it was cancelled...

 

[Osato]

Not to be "that guy," but I fully expected the update to be it was cancelled...

Same. It’s been off and on for years.

Maybe the sale of paramount will bring some stability to this Project and others.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Not to be "that guy," but I fully expected the update to be it was cancelled...

Same. Cast isn’t under contract anymore. They resigned 2015/2016 for a two picture deal that included Beyond. California law limits length of enforceable personal services contract to 7 years so as of 2024, everyone has to be resigned. Some of the cast are probably in less demand than in 2016, others more, but Paramount probably needs them more than they need Paramount so any one of them could cause a headache towards getting it done.

To me it’s just bizarre that they haven’t been able to figure out timely sequels since 2009. The studio has taken bigger bets on lesser properties since then. They had a brief window in ‘09 where Trek was mainstream cool and had an entry point where the general public didn’t feel the barrier of entry of decades of other films and series and they just blew it with delay after delay after delay.

This could one day be a textbook class in franchise mismanagement at some film school.

 

[Malcolm R]

If it's taken them this long to come up with a worthwhile story/script, that's probably evidence that they should just pack it in and stick with their TV shows.

 

[benbess]

@Tino has sometimes said that big budget movies probably need to gross something close to 3x their budget to be profitable. By that measure, none of the Star Trek movies starting in 2009 has been profitable. Probably with home theater and streaming the first two made modest profits, but Star Trek Beyond lost a lot of money.

As we know, a modest profit is not what these companies are looking for. Since they are looking for big bucks, the loss of $50 million (and probably more) on Star Trek Beyond burned into their collective corporate minds.

All of these new Trek movies, mostly because of story elements/writing, have been mixed in terms of quality from my pov. I personally feel JJ Abrams has something to do with with the problematic elements in these movies, in terms of their stories and huge costs. I'd prefer Trek to move on without JJA, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Abrams was barely involved in Star Trek Beyond but because this iteration of Trek was launched as a co-pro with Bad Robot, he’ll get screen credit and be asked to give notes regardless of his day to day involvement.

I think Abrams’ greatest strength as a creative is reminding people why they fell in love with something to begin with, and conveying that enthusiasm in a way that makes it inviting for new audience members to come onboard. While Mission Impossible 3, Star Trek ‘09 and The Force Awakens aren’t exactly Best Picture winners, they each reinvigorated the franchises they’re a part of.

Abrams’ greatest weakness as a creative is that he himself doesn’t like discovering answers to mysteries (he famously has a toy mystery box from his childhood that still remains unopened because, unopened, it could still be anything), so his work falters when he’s put in a position that requires moving things along. In that, he’s a typical TV guy for a typical TV ecosystem, where the head producer sets up all the pieces and then hands off to a creative team that handles the day to day reality of running a series (or franchise).

Paramount were so happy with how Star Trek ‘09 did that they wanted Abrams to continue making the films at all costs, and that was their mistake, not recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of the talent they coveted. For the first time in a generation, Star Trek was picking up new fans and expanding its appeal, and they agreed to put it on the back burner for four years so that Abrams could make another project first. That was the fatal error. He didn’t want to direct a second Trek film, and they still waited for a director who wasn’t passionate about the project.

I rather like Star Trek Into Darkness in spite of its faults but it’s probably not the movie they should have made. It features a recurring plot device that Kurtzman/Orci have reused on various projects, where they negate the character development of the previous film to send the characters on the same journey again - it’s what lawyers call “already asked and answered”. And by bringing back legacy characters from outside this new iteration Abrams had launched, it made following this Trek the same kind of inside baseball that served as a barrier to entry to causal viewers before Abrams had opened it up. It was sort of everything that people who are suspicious of Star Trek are wary of, and that’s not how you build a franchise. I don’t think the effects of that were really seen in Into Darkness’s box office (you can’t know you’re not going to like a movie until after you’ve seen it) but I think that was the cause of Beyond’s underperformance. The great irony of that is that Beyond is the kind of movie that should do well in a summer tentpole action season and be accessible to the general public, but they weren’t inclined to give it a try by that point.

Everything since then has been a misstep with predictable results. How in the world do you blow getting Quentin Tarantino? He might’ve made a great movie, he might’ve made a terrible one, but whatever it would have been, it would have been interesting. When he expressed interest, they should have said, “Great, let’s sign you to a contract and then you can start playing with ideas,” and not, “Sure, go ahead and let’s announce you but not actually put anything on paper that would require you to keep your commitment”.

They’ve let at least two other directors leave their contracts voluntarily and that’s just bizarre too - you can’t just sign people and let them walk, at some point, someone has to gather the troops and put them on camera and let the chips fall where they may.

The longer each delay goes on, the more pressure there is that the film has to be this big massive thing that succeeds across the board while serving too many masters - it can no longer just be the next installment in a long running franchise. That’s their big problem. If they just made more films, they wouldn’t have to be so precious about needing the next one to be the end all, be all.

And now the landscape for theatrical has changed so much that there just isn’t room to make the film in an economically smart way. It has be a tentpole. It has to cost $200+ million. It has to have a $200+ million advertising budget. And it has to make $1 billion in three weeks. That’s an absurd amount of pressure to put on a Star Trek film but that’s the corner Paramount has backed themselves into.

 

[Malcolm R]

ST has always been weaker internationally, but I think Paramount saw the $257 million domestic number on the 2009 film (which was massive, the only prior ST film to even cross $100 million unadjusted was Voyage Home) and thought they could build from that. Into Darkness did better worldwide, but then Beyond was a massive step back domestically and internationally.