ALTHistory: WI Star Trek VII was a bomb in the box office?

[JamesSmith]

What if Star Trek VII: Generations was a major box office bomb, what will happen to the future of the Star Trek franchise, then Star Trek XI would be Star Trek VIII.

 

[DimesDan]

what?

 

[T'Girl]

Depends on how big a bomb it was. If there were no follow on movies it's unlikely there would have been a movie made in 2009.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

what?

I take it this is your first time reading a JamesSmith thread.

 

[startrekrcks]

what

 

[LeadHead]

I get the feeling they would have done one TNG movie after that, to test the waters, see if they could be continued. If it bombed then the game would be over. Gen was a combo movie, despite its clear emphasis on the TNG crew.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

What if Star Trek VII: Generations was a major box office bomb, what will happen to the future of the Star Trek franchise, then Star Trek XI would be Star Trek VIII.

As a franchise, Star Trek was in little danger in '94. Even if the film had underperformed to, say Star Trek V levels, there was still DS9, and Voyager was about to debut.

There would have been another film in '96. There's no real doubt of that. And it would probably have been a TNG film, because there wouldn't have been any reason not to try again with what was arguably the most popular branch of the franchise. The whole point of taking TNG off the air was to create a series of cheap and profitable films. Even if Generations didn't work, Paramount wouldn't have given up on that experiment.

Now, had that film underperformed, Paramount would most likely have turned to another producer to try for the following film, much like they brought in Harve Bennett in 1980 to pick up from the wreckage Roddenberry left in his wake. From Paramount's point of view, they would say, "Rick Berman, you're a top-notch television producer, but you're lousy as fuck as a film producer."

And, in reality, Berman was a lousy film producer. His background was television, and he approached the films on his watch as television productions. Bennett, a decade earlier, was also a television producer, but he surrounded himself with film people. Berman's films were big-budget television movies and had little ambition beyond that.

 

[JamesSmith]

The uniforms for Star Trek: First Contact (the movie which never existed in this reality), the ships Akira-class, Steamrunner-class, Saber-class and Borg Sphere, along with the First Contact rifles still exists in this reality, although they are created for Deep Space Nine and Voyager. The Sovereign class starship Enterprise-E still exists in this reality and makes an only appearance in the Voyager episode: "Timeless."

Then in 1996 in this reality, Rick Berman is hit by a car and dies in the hospital shortly after, leaving the Star Trek franchise to helped by Clint Eastwood and James Cameron.

Two years later, during Star Trek: Voyager's 100 episode: "Timeless," the Enterprise-E makes an appearance with the special guest appearances of Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard (an All Good Things future version) and LeVar Burton as Commander Geordi La Forge, while the Enterprise-E is attempting to stop the Delta Flyer in the future.

Star Trek: Enterprise was never created in this reality, so Scott Bakula stars as Colonel Tigh in Battlestar Galactica.

J.J. Abrams' Star Trek still released in May 8, 2009 as Star Trek: Enterprise and was the first movie since the flop, Star Trek: Generations to be released.

 

[T'Girl]

After Clint Eastwood takes over the Star Trek franchise, he kills off the character of Janeway, command of the the Voyager is turned over to a previously unseen officer, played by Clint Eastwood.

Chakotay is replaced by a large orange orangutan.

 

[FalTorPan]

Chakotay is replaced by a large orange orangutan.

...and quickly becomes the series' most popular character.

 

[startrekrcks]

Would JJ Abrams Star Trek XI have been made if Generations flopped.

 

[diankra]

Would JJ Abrams Star Trek XI have been made if Generations flopped.

A Star Trek restart would have been made (because Paramount want money, andd franchises make money). But if the film franchise had failed earlier, then the restart would have happened earlier, before Abrams had the track record to be approached.

 

[spaceballone]

They would have given a Next generation cast only film a shot but if that didn't go they still had Harve Bennet's aborted starfleet academy movie to fall back on which would have included Shatner and Nimoy in limited roles.

 

[VOODOOXI]

Generations actually was somewhat of a disappointment at the box office. While the film did ok, it was thought that the very popular at the time TNG crew could bring in a bigger audience than the aging TOS crew. Unfortunately, the film wasn't very good and the TNG crew never enjoyed the box office success of the TOS crew.

By the time of the final TNG film the franchise could barely generate $40 million at the box office and lost in a head to head battle with the Jennifer Lopez "classic" Maid in Manhattan.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I still think the failure of Nemesis, particularly on that opening weekend, had more to do with fan frustration over Enterprise, and boycotting the opening was the only form of protest left that Berman and Co. couldn't ignore. That Nemesis was unable to recover from that lousy opening weekend is purely because it was a lousy movie.

 

[startrekrcks]

Well I'm glad that the restart was made it is like a new river isn't it

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I still think the failure of Nemesis, particularly on that opening weekend, had more to do with fan frustration over Enterprise, and boycotting the opening was the only form of protest left that Berman and Co. couldn't ignore. That Nemesis was unable to recover from that lousy opening weekend is purely because it was a lousy movie.

A fan boycott caused Nemesis to fail?

Nemesis failed because of marketing and a crowded release calendar, not because fans boycotted the film.

Christmas 2002 had three tentpole genre films -- Two Towers, Chamber of Secrets, and Die Another Day. Nemesis didn't stand out in that field.

I think it also failed because Paramount has been extremely slow in adapting to and adopting the multimedia synergy that is typical of major tentpole films today. The three films named above were more than just movies in the theater. There were video game tie-ins for all three. There were restaurant promotions. There were toys, statues, etc.

Nemesis had none of that. Activision's lawsuit was aimed at that; Activision wanted to make a Nemesis game, because they'd had success with movie tie-in games like Spider-Man the year previous. Paramount said no. Paramount didn't fucking get it. The movie is just one part of the revenue and cultural stream. The movie isn't all of the revenue and cultural stream. Ten years earlier, five years earlier, Nemesis would have been fine. Maybe not a blockbuster, but not a failure, either.

For what it's worth, I think that Nemesis isn't a terrible film. It's not a great film, it's often not even very good. But it at least has ambition, which is more than can be said of its three TNG predecessors.

 

[Broccoli]

^ Supposedly Nemesis had the biggest marketing campaign of all the Trek movies. I honestly don't remember it at all. I think they did have some sort of tie-in with Taco Bell.

However, your point remains, the reasons Nemesis failed were many, but blaming Enterprise on Nemesis is incredibly misguided.

Generations actually was somewhat of a disappointment at the box office.

What were they expecting? Generations did about as good as Star Trek VI and that was considered a success, no?

 

[Allyn Gibson]

^ Supposedly Nemesis had the biggest marketing campaign of all the Trek movies. I honestly don't remember it at all. I think they did have some sort of tie-in with Taco Bell.

A Taco Bell tie-in? Wow. I had no idea.

Generations actually was somewhat of a disappointment at the box office.

What were they expecting? Generations did about as good as Star Trek VI and that was considered a success, no?

The expectation was that Generations would perform significantly better than Star Trek VI as it starred what was arguably the most popular of the Star Trek series and had the crossover appeal with the two captains.

And the film failed in another way. Paramount wanted the TNG movies to be low-budget affairs; that was the whole reason for taking TNG off the air. But Generations cost slightly more than Star Trek VI, and the subsequent films were more expensive, significantly so in some cases. If Paramount really wanted a series of low-budget Star Trek films, they should have gone with Harve Bennett's "Starfleet Academy" script and its cast of unknowns instead. The diminishing returns that the studio felt they were getting off of the films simply continued into the NextGen film era.

 

[Broccoli]

^ Supposedly Nemesis had the biggest marketing campaign of all the Trek movies. I honestly don't remember it at all. I think they did have some sort of tie-in with Taco Bell.

A Taco Bell tie-in? Wow. I had no idea.

I think it was Taco Bell...I'll have to look it up.

Edit: I was wrong, but close. It was Del Taco, a place I have never heard of, because there are no locations in Illinois. Looking at their site, seems like they are located in only 16 of the 50 states.

More about promotion.