Avery Brooks career. Or is he with the prophets?

[JarodRussell]

Geez, calm down! Nobody is hating Tom Cruise - I am not, he's a decent actor and I've enjoyed a few of his movies - I am just saying that, if he were to play Pike, most people wouldn't see Christopher Pike, they would just see TOM CRUISE PLAYING PIKE. Heck, the new Star Trek might even become 'the newest Tom Cruise movie'.

So fracking what? If Paramount executives had bought him over to play Pike, then maybe they would have wanted big box office, and Tom Cruise would have been the insurance that help put butts on seats, and garned a big payoff. Same thing as getting Matt Damon to play Kirk, or Gary Sinese to play McCoy as was originally planned, since the franchise was on life support as it was and needed a lot of star power.

What, do you think it would have made a billion with Cruise, Damon and Sinese?

 

[DevilEyes]

Geez, calm down! Nobody is hating Tom Cruise - I am not, he's a decent actor and I've enjoyed a few of his movies - I am just saying that, if he were to play Pike, most people wouldn't see Christopher Pike, they would just see TOM CRUISE PLAYING PIKE. Heck, the new Star Trek might even become 'the newest Tom Cruise movie'.

So fracking what? If Paramount executives had bought him over to play Pike, then maybe they would have wanted big box office, and Tom Cruise would have been the insurance that help put butts on seats, and garned a big payoff. Same thing as getting Matt Damon to play Kirk, or Gary Sinese to play McCoy as was originally planned, since the franchise was on life support as it was and needed a lot of star power.

What, do you think it would have made a billion with Cruise, Damon and Sinese?

Well with that cast (and the budget that would go up by at least about 50 million $ to pay for their salaries) it probably would have to earn a billion to match or exceed the financial success of Star Trek 09 as it is!

Um, Dusty, Paramount already wanted big box office, and got it. If they had Cruise in it, they could have gotten even bigger box office, but they also would have had higher costs, which could mean that the box office would not be considered enough to be a success. Or they'd have to severely cut down on the special effects, in order to pay for Cruise's, Damon's, etc, salaries. You have a rather popular franchise brand name (even if it has not been successful lately), you have a very successful director who has become a brand name of his own, you have several quite popular young and up-and-coming stars, you want big special effects and a lot of publicity: you don't need a huge A-list star to propel your movie, and you certainly don't need his salary to eat up your budget.

 

[exodus]

And yet, after he accepted the role, the Afro-American media (Ebony & Jet in particular) didn't even try to give him any coverage of any kind; all the coverage was on the clownish 'comedy' stars like Martin Lawrence, every goddam R&B star, and everybody else but him and Cirroc Lofton (the same thing's also happened to Michael Dorn, LeVar Burton, Christopher Judge, Richard Biggs, and Kandyse McClure), so I'm not sure that anybody in the Afro-American community knew what kind of a role model he was supposed to be.

As a member of the "African"-American community, I can tell you as fact many in the community looked up to him and clearly understood that he was a role model despite the medias lack of representation. The fact of the matter is that during this time period that TNG & DS9 were on, sci-fi wasn't being taken seriously and Trek itself has limited appeal when next to a show like Martin which had mass appeal, higher ratings and on a up & coming major network. I don't see how we can blame Ebony & Jet for lack of coverage when Paramount themselves weren't promoting DS9 either.