Empire's Star Trek Box Office Prediction

[Roger Wilco]

I don't think anyone can make any halfway serious estimates about Star Trek XI's box office success at this point, and certainly not someone who isn't even involved in the production of the movie.

btw. not making a simultaneous worldwide release will hurt it's revenue outside the US, Paramount should seriously reconsider that...

 

[Flake]

When adjusted for inflation the majority of Trek films have made more than $100 million, the only ones that haven't are 5, 9 and 10.

Infact both TMP and TVH have done over $200 million domestic when allowing for ticket price inflation.

 

[Roshi]

CommanderRaytas said:

Belar said:

Trajet said:
The ratio of income coming from overseas ticket sales surprised me too, but I think it might be accurate. This Star Trek movie will probably be marketed quite vigorously outside Trek's three core markets - the US, Canada and the UK. The fact that the official site has versions of the teaser in Italian, French, Russian and Spanish would tend to support this assumption.

I still wonder where the German version is. Germany has a huge fanbase.

So true. There's the two of us, for one...

I work in Luxembourg, does that count as three?

 

[Roger Wilco]

Mutenroshi said:
I work in Luxembourg, does that count as three?

No, Lëtzebuerg is a much nicer place than Germany.

 

[RAMA]

Ok I'm more confident of this movie's success now, I think it might do $140-160 million domestically, and $150-175 million worldwide. Around $300 million would probably automatically green light a sequel.

RAMA

 

[Balthier the Great]

http://movies.hsx.com/servlet/SecurityDetail?symbol=TRK11&day_span=all&field=

HSX has the trek film making 100 milion domestic. It been rising steadily, so I think $115-$130 million isn't out there too far.

 

[Mr J]

Well, simply the fact that major film publications are predicting success like this is fantastic news for the film. These sort of publications tend to know what they are talking about a lot more than we would and for them to be predicting such high takings is most definately encouraging.

 

[Cyrus]

For the general public this movie is sort of like TMP, a rebirth of Star Trek with some good amount of hype. I don't know what the current inflation adjusted boxoffice of TMP is, but it's got to be over $200 million domestically.

My estimate is $200 million domestically and another $100 million overseas. I think it has potential to do even better than that, but that depends on the word of mouth.

 

[scotthm]

Frontier said:
Abrams can not make it appeal to the masses. No one can.

I disagree, but it's not necessary.

If 1% of the population pays an average of $5 to see the movie one time, it will gross over $300,000,000. The other 99% can be oblivious, as long as that 1% all go to see it at least once.

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[StarMan]

Frontier said:
No one can. Yet the studio tries and tries to make it a Star Wars clone for the money such brings in.

How did you derive the notion that this film will be a Star Wars clone? The action quota they've alluded to? The budget?

Just curious.

 

[ancient]

Based on nothing, my prediction: (subject to change w/o notice)

-Domestic: $180 mil

-Foreign: $100 mil

TOTAL: $280 mil

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

I have a feeling Abrams and Paramount are going to overtly try to raise the percentage of the forgeign box office. Most films do 35-40% domestic and 60-65% foreign. Star Trek has traditionally been the opposite of that, takeing in 65% of its ticket sails in the U.S.

I predict that their push to increase the foreign box office will succeed, and the film will make $150-175 million domestic and $175-200 million foreign = about $350 million or more total.

 

[cardinal biggles]

Trajet said:
I can't help but think a US box office gross of $115 million is a little bit on the pessimistic side - it's not really that much more than the $92 million First Contact managed to rake in at the US box office back in 1996/97, and it's worth remembering that First Contact had nothing like the media interest or marketing buzz that Star Trek seems to be generating.

It's actually less. (see below)

Cyrus said:
For the general public this movie is sort of like TMP, a rebirth of Star Trek with some good amount of hype. I don't know what the current inflation adjusted boxoffice of TMP is, but it's got to be over $200 million domestically.

Funny you should mention that... I recently updated the numbers for a Trek Movies thread.

Film(year) -- domestic/domestic adjusted
----------------------------------------
TMP (1979) -- $82,258,456 / $261,618,726
TWOK (1982) -- $78,912,963 / $180,123,380
TSFS (1984) -- $76,471,046 / $159,262,876
TVH (1986) -- $109,713,132 / $211,461,871
TFF (1989) -- $52,210,049 / $91,567,823
TUC (1991) -- $74,888,996 / $118,906,311
GEN (1994) -- $75,671,125 / $108,686,329
FC (1996) -- $92,027,888 / $125,320,959
INS (1998) -- $70,187,658 / $90,709,369
NEM (2002) -- $43,254,409 / $50,648,142

So yeah, Trajet, $115m for this movie would be really pessimistic, because that would mean it didn't even outperform the most successful Trek film of the 90s, much less approach the box office of the first four.

 

[section9]

JJ is going to make this a slam-bang action flick. The pacing on other Trek flicks was agonizingly slow, including TWOK. That's what killled Trek. JJ knows this.

Watch JJ at work. The pace will be picked up considerably, and I expect this movie's "cool quotient" to be resurrected among young people.

JJ is out to do nothing less than jump the entire franchise's batteries among a new generation of young people. WE ARE NOT THE TARGET AUDIENCE FOR THIS FILM.

 

[scotthm]

section9 said:
JJ is going to make this a slam-bang action flick.

Oh, another one who's apparently read the script. Can you PM it to me?

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[Jimmy_C]

scotthm said:

Frontier said:
Abrams can not make it appeal to the masses. No one can.

I disagree, but it's not necessary.

If 1% of the population pays an average of $5 to see the movie one time, it will gross over $300,000,000. The other 99% can be oblivious, as long as that 1% all go to see it at least once.

---------------

Only the first world (the 60 countries listed here) will probably see the movie. Maybe some other countries too, but those are the most important ones. They have a collective population of 960,242,948 (added together using the most recent estimates). If only 1% of them watch Star Trek for $5, then it flops with $48 million dollars made. The new movie MUST appeal to more than 1% of the first world. The third world will probably never see Star Trek anyway.

 

[Lumen]

So if 2% of the first world sees Star Trek for $10 (I don't know where you get tickets for $5 ) then it'll make $200 million?

 

[Cyrus]

Jimmy_C said:
The third world will probably never see Star Trek anyway.

They will. US movies do get released in many of the 3rd world countries, and in the rest of them they get the movies via bootleg DVDs. So they all get to see it but in some cases the money isn't coming back to Paramount.

 

[scotthm]

Jimmy_C said:

scotthm said:
If 1% of the population pays an average of $5 to see the movie one time, it will gross over $300,000,000. The other 99% can be oblivious, as long as that 1% all go to see it at least once.

Only the first world (the 60 countries listed here) will probably see the movie. ...They have a collective population of 960,242,948 (added together using the most recent estimates).

Fine. Then if just 5% of the 'first world' population sees Star Trek at $8 a ticket, it will gross over $380,000,000.

A movie can make lots of money with only a small minority of people paying to see it in theaters.

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[Son_of_Soong]

*will see it twice*