The “Star Trek” franchise has always been about the shows, with the movies a supplemental part of the equation. While the franchise did yield some classic features like ‘Wrath of Khan’ and solid entries like ‘Undiscovered Country’ and ‘First Contact’, the films always played second fiddle to the series.
The result was an economical ten film franchise with most entries made for tight budgets in the $20-40 million range and most of the time yielded films that generated around $70-150 million in box-office. That changed when J.J. Abrams came along in 2009 and rebooted the films, snagging much higher production budgets ($140m for 2009’s film, $185-190m for the sequels) and resulting in higher box-office in the $335-467 million range.
Unfortunately for the money spent, the new films haven’t made enough to be a major profit generator – something distributor Paramount Pictures is in desperate need of. The only option then to continue is trim the budget considerably, something that won’t happen according to actor Simon Pegg who suggests the films are pretty much over because Paramount can’t go back to making them cheaper. He tells Games Radar:
“The fact is, Star Trek movies don’t make Marvel money. They make maybe $500 million at the most, and to make one now, on the scale they’ve set themselves, is $200 million. You have to make three times that to make a profit.
I don’t feel like the last one… They didn’t really take advantage of the 50th anniversary. The regimen at the time dropped the ball on the promo of the film. And we’ve lost momentum. I think losing Anton [Yelchin] was a huge blow to our little family, and our enthusiasm to do another one might have been affected by that. So I don’t know.”
It certainly sounds as though the recent Abrams trilogy of films has come to an end, and so whatever comes next from the film side of the franchise will have to be quite different. Meanwhile, the TV side of the ‘Trek’ franchise is going strong with “Star Trek: Picard” just over halfway through airing its first season and starting production on its second, while “Star Trek: Discovery” wrapped its third season shoot recently.
