Paramount officially announces Star Trek 3 for 2016

I think that probably broke down as: people who hated the first one weren't going to come to the second one and the people who liked the first one were going to show up and see what was next. Regardless of white Khan or the secrecy surrounding him. I saw Into Darkness three times in the theater.

It's possible I am completely wrong though.

 

I think the whole approach they took to the marketing was extremely poor. Branding the movie as "dark" was a mistake, as well as the secrecy. There was no point in hiding that it was Khan, and they could have used Khan to try and generate excitement. The trailers, while technically good, came across to me as extremely generic. Also, 4 years was way too much time in between films these days. They didn't capitalize on the success of the 09 picture fast enough. This is all just IMO, of course.

 

I was convinced STID was a lock for at least $600m+ before release. I genuinely believed Trek was finally going to become a bona fide member of the mega-franchise club. But now, I have to agree the next one is likely to do about the same business.

Still, STID was a tremendous success nevertheless, and returns in $500m ballpark are more than enough to keep Trek alive and in rude health!

 

STID didn't do better because it was unable to capture the younger demographic.

Those younger viewers probably don't know, or don't care who Khan is, so I doubt using his character as a marketing point would have made any difference.

While audiences generally liked the movie, I don't think it had much word of mouth behind it. The movie came off as somewhat generic, as did the title, the posters, the trailers, and everything about it.

 

I still believe the next one can do $600 mil, but this is a probably the top figure for me. Look at the numbers for the Captain America movies the first one did $370 mil, the second $710 mil and counting! I know a lot of it is off the back of the Avengers, but there's no way anyone will get me to agree that the character is as popular as Trek.

It's this accepting that things will stay the same and Trek will always do the same sort of business and become a mid ranking cash cow that brought on the franchise fatigue (on the big screen at least) in the first place. I don't want them to get complacent, they have shown massive ambition with these two movies so far

 

I think it had good of mouth, everyone I know who saw it, loved it (non trekkies included). It also had a lot more competition than the 09 picture did. STID was sandwiched between IM3 and FF6.

 

The competition in May 2016 is even worse too, potentially enough to sink ST3 if it gets a May slot. They should go mid April like Captain America 2 did or well into June

 

Agreed. They need to avoid May, it will be destroyed.

 

I'm in the 'marketing will make or break ST3' camp. With the stiff competition from some big titles in 2016, general moviegoers need accessible reasons to pick Trek over the other action movies of the week.

When I say 'make or break', I really mean push earnings past the mediocre returns folks here are predicting. Trek 3, moreover the marketing leading up to the release, has got to give people something to talk about.

 

Agreed. Skyfall made a huge splash in 2012 by marketing the 50th anniversary of the James Bond film franchise. Paramount would basically be throwing money away by not releasing ST3 in 2016.

 

I really thought beforehand that it would do better, too. In that light, there was a tinge of disappointment. But yes, it still was a success.

The demographics compared to ST09 weren't tremendously different, but do tend to support the idea that STID skewed a bit older. According to Box Office Mojo, in their respective opening weekends, ST09 skewed 60 percent male, STID was 64 percent male. ST09 skewed 65 percent over age 25, STID was 73 percent over 25.

I've always thought two things kept it from doing even better. First, the marketing (at least in the U.S.) was weird. Second, coming out so late after ST09, I think a fair amount of positive audience momentum among casual move-goers was lost. If there had been any way it could've come out in 2011, I think it actually would've out performed ST09 and probably led to even more anticipation of the next one. Just speculation, though.

It's more than likely, too, that the audience for Trek will never reach Marvel character numbers. The $250 million to $275 million mark domestically might be most realistic. Building the overseas market to make it a half-billion dollar franchise seems likely, but that may be the limit. Of course, that would be enough to keep us in Trek movies on into the future.

 

Agreed. I remember when a big deal was made about three years passing between INS and NEM as being a contributing factor to the disappointing sales of the latter. I never really thought the same about STID, but now that I think about it, yes, a year earlier might well have notched up box office returns. The question is, would we have gotten the same film, better, or worse (rushed)?

 

I don't really see how the length of time between the two movies mattered. Four years between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises box office sales, nor did four years between Quantum of Solace and Skyfall.

Don't get me wrong, I agree Bad Robot unnecessarily dragged their ass with making STID, and they should have met the original locked-in release date of summer 2012. But I don't think it would have had any impact on box office sales.

The shroud of secrecy hut the movie more than anything. People don't want to see a movie they don't know anything about. Saying "the Enterprise fights Khan" would have planted more butts in the theatre than saying "the Enterprise fights someone" did.

 

I think how SKYFALL capitalized on the 50th anniversary of the franchise shows that it made it feel like an event you had to go to. This was a celebration, and there were probably a lot of people thinking about how amazing it is that the franchise lasted this long and I know because of this event it made more people get interested in checking out the older films, making new fans in the process. There was something special about that milestone. I think if Paramount wants to truly capitalize on that kind of hype, they need to really celebrate those 50 years. Put out tweets/facebook posts about all the great things that came out of the films and TV shows. Embrace its history, its effect on pop culture, on how Star Trek will always be around. Showing confidence in your franchise may make it look a lot more appealing and it will get people interested in the flick. They need to go all out on this one instead of keeping things hush hush.

Orci's comments about the third film being more like a TOS story sounds like what's needed to celebrate the franchise. Bring it back to its roots, when it was about a group of explorers who were on their own facing the unknown and they were far away from Earth.

 

Ouch.that's a bit harsh.ironically everything you mentioned. star trek 2009 had that in abundance.

 

Jumping in here, I think Star Trek Into Darkness suffered due to the secrecy, as well as some bad word of mouth due to in fighting among fans. I was part of another Trek fan board and the grumbling and outright hatred of Abrams and Co. was such that I just got fed up and didn't see it for three weeks.

I regret that now, and am glad I saw it, but there was definitely some fan backlash that had an impact.

Also, the delay was an odd thing and it sucks that it took so long to get out there. It left too much time for speculation so that when Khan was the villain, everyone was kind of mixed just because so many options had been suggested.

ST 3 (2016) will do well to keep its time table because people are watching now.

 

I feel bad for anyone who showed up expecting to see the fleet detonated.

 

I agree as well. what is even worse is that there was a poll about Into Darkness been called the worst star trek film of all time. The poll was based on 100 fans at a convention but for some weird reason the poll seemed to spread like wild fire on the Internet and majority of people think it was true when that was not even the case.

I was shocked and appalled that the media will take that kind of story seriously. Star Trek Into Darkness is in no way the worst star trek film of all time.its ridiculous.

 

And I would like to know what a "fleet detonation" looks like.

 

Well, you would have seen it if they'd used the only appropriate villain for that blurb. I speak of Lazarus, of course.