CBS and Paramount officially back together
- Thread starter Amasov
- Start date
I quite agree. A Trek movie apparently can't be produced anymore unless it's a Threat to Earth story or a Let's Destroy the Enterprise or At Least Smash Her Up story. (I think the last one that avoided both of these themes was Insurrection, 21 years ago, but that had its own problems.) TV episodes, as the original series so amply proved, have all kinds of story flexibility.
They could scale back to mid-tier budgets like they used to in the past, but studios don’t do that anymore, unfortunately. It’s either low budget indies or hundred million dollar tent pole films. As interesting as it was watching the Kelvin films with Marvel level budgets, there were times where I thought they really overdid it unnecessarily. These films never made it past $500 million at the box office, and yet Paramount kept treating the films no differently than how TRANSFORMERS performed.
As much as I loved Treks II-IV & VI, First Contact, Trek' 09 and Beyond the franchise really does thrive on television (and in novels) where the stories have much more room to breathe. And where the stakes don't have to be apocalyptic.
I have no idea why they tried to take Star Trek, which is popular here in the US but niche in (most of) the rest of the world, and tried to make it a 100 million dollar tentpole franchise. There's a reason Paramount tried to force a pay cut on Chris Pine after Beyond. The franchise just doesn't do that well overseas.
Title.............................................................Domestic / %................Overseas / %
Star Trek Into Darkness..............................$228.8 (48.9%).......$238.6 (51.1%)
Star Trek.....................................................$257.7 (66.8%).......$128.0 (33.2%)
Star Trek Beyond........................................$158.8 (46.2%).......$184.6 (53.8%)
Star Trek: First Contact...............................$92.0 (63%)............$54.0 (37%)
Star Trek: Generations................................$75.7 (64.1%).........$42.4 (35.9%)
Star Trek: Insurrection.................................$70.2 (62.3%).........$42.4 (37.7%)
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.....$74.9 (77.3%).........$22.0 (22.7%)
Star Trek: Nemesis......................................$43.3 (64.3%).........$24.1 (35.7%)
Exactly - my take on Into Darkness has always been such: It has the earmarks and twists of a full season of JJ Abrams style television - dropping us into the end of one episode, shocking twists and deaths and reveals that would have been shocking and fun if we had a few episodes to build up the character drama and emotions in the background - relationship drama, the Khan reveal, the explosion at HQ, Pike's death, Kirk's sacrifice, etc - it was like we got all the big moments and actions sequences of the whole season compressed into one movie.
I think they really fumbled it with the sequels. ST09 had a respectable box office take which paralleled BATMAN BEGINS; a reboot of a franchise that had been on ice after the last one bombed. Sadly that’s where the parallel ended.
My reply to all of this is: They should split the difference and make some straight-to-streaming movies, similar to what Netflix and HBO does.
An obvious choice here would be an Anson Mount/Captain Pike movie, or movies. Mount seems reluctant to do a series like Discovery long-term because of the time he'd be away from home and his new wife, but maybe a couple of streaming movies would be more up his alley? Of course, there are other good topics and possibilities for Star Trek streaming movies, but the Pike/Mount one is my current favorite.
But with streaming movies you kind of get the best of both worlds. You can give it a budget similar to the older Star Trek movies, and make it a little more cerebral than the recent films since you're not worrying about attracting the general movie going audience.
With the effects/production we see on a show like Discovery I'd have no issue with just some TV/streaming only movies. Yea they may not have quite the scale of a 200 million dollar Hollywood blockbuster but that's not what Star Trek should strive to be. Its not meant to be another Star Wars and that's ok.
My own theory is that what's going to happen. Paramount will continue to produce Trek movies, but aside from the possible Tarantino ones, they may all just be on CBS All Access from this point forward.
Since we're all one just big happy fleet now...
At least part of that is down to the poor TV deals Trek had outside of the US - eg. in Australia, Paramount had contracts requiring Trek to air behind VHS releases, which meant a small core of fans bought/rented/bootlegged those, while TV networks buried episodes late at night and years behind.
It will be interesting to see if Netflix distribution has brought in a wider audience.
Alex Kurtzman's production company is now in charge of the movies so if new theatrical movies will be produced, I would expect them to tie into the current TV shows.
Now that all the rights are under one roof and the secret licensing agreements dissolved, will CBS finally make real Platypus Man?
As long as they're more than glorified two-part TV episodes or the Babylon 5 movies, that's acceptable.
Totally agreed.
The scale of TV has changed (and for the better) so drastically in the last 15 years. Plus I don't think you'll get too big an argument from anyone when you say that Trek is more suited for the TV screen anyway. Even during the heyday back in the late 80s and through the 90s, the films were an added bonus to seeing Trek weekly. While it was always great to look forward to a new movie, we still had our weekly fix.
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The only show I actually WANT is that speculative DS9 Season 8 as a limited series event. Otherwise, I’m looking forward to what Trek is offering so far.
I vaguely recall (if remember correctly) that TWOK - considered one of the best Trek movies - was budgeted and shot under Paramount TV division almost as if a high-ened TV production? Certainly a significantly smaller budget than TMP, with more of the feel of the original series
Exactly! I'm not going to pretend I understand the logistics and budgeting behind producing a summer blockbuster film as opposed to an episode of a streaming TV show, but since Discovery's budget is somewhere between $6-8 million per episode, and considering the amazing special effects they've been able to pull off on that show, I got to think that a two hour streaming movie would be more-than-satisfying. I guess it all depends on whether or not ViacomCBS' focus group data results suggest they can keep/garner enough subscribers to justify direct-to-streaming movies.
