Why didn't Q appear in any of the TNG films?

Please name some.

I said earlier, I wasn't discussing TV shows. The regulars already have contracts, and sometimes clauses to cover potential spin-offs. I was talking about major motion pictures. Studios do not usually commission a major motion picture to revolve around one particular actor in the guest-starring role.

And often that actor's production team has commissioned the script. Or the actor has an outstanding contract for an unproduced movie to be made starring him/her.

Would most ST fans be satisfied with a ST movie script written expressly for John de Lancie as Q, but with Q being played by a new actor.

No.

 

And that makes this thread different to many other threads on TrekBBS how?

Of course we can all come up with counter arguments. We are discussing a hypothetical situation. As I said, I have been in several convention audiences when the OP's question was asked of John de Lancie and also of Paramount representatives, and my comments have incorporated the answers they gave at the time.

Sure, we can all think of ways around the situation. There are exceptions to every rule, and Hollywood is good at breaking its own rules. Sometimes there are no rules. But... for perhaps many, many reasons, no Q movie happened.

IIRC, de Lancie has many irons in the fire. He is a busy man. He is/was involved with many showbiz things, such as producing Alien Voices, writing, teaching: activities that don't necessarily put him in front of a camera. Putting them all aside for a week for the filming of a single ST episode is one thing. Putting them aside for three months for a ST movie is another. Yes, he would need to consider if the ST movie offer was worth his while to do.

Yep, and that clause in the previous contract is where the participation negotiations begin. The regular ST actors' contracts contained those clauses. The guest star and day-players don't have those in-built clauses. Without such a clause, negotiations can be trickier. So a spec movie written around Jonathan Frakes (and the USS Titan) has less chance of being stymied by pay deals than a spec TNG movie written around John de Lancie. The studio would weigh up the financial risks of commissioning a ST movie script without Stewart and Spiner against the risk of a whole-cast TNG movie featuring Q that the crucial guest actor might turn down until he sees a script.

The extraordinary success of the first X-Men movie made a sequel a no-brainer. The rising stars of Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry and Ian McKellen meant that, although contractually set-up for two sequels each, the timing of their participation in more X-Men films, between other bigger, more career-fulfilling projects, was tricky. And delays cost $$$$. And that they'd be expecting their roles to be meaty enough to challenge them.

Scott Bakula's five-year ST contract allowed for his participation in two Paramount movies, not necessarily ST. Paramount doesn't have to act on that clause, but it's there to enable the negotiation process to begin.