This movie has shown that Star Trek can do well at the box office. The next movie will undoubtedly focus more on gaining more of that lucrative international market 
Foreign numbers VERY Dissapointing.
- Thread starter Blue_Trek
- Start date
No, it wasn't. In almost every major market, it was either earlier or the same as the US - Australia, the UK, Germany, Spain, Russia, Romania, France...
The only significant countries from a potential box office perspective who didn't get it in the same week were China and Japan.
Damn! If only Trek had been stupid, worthless garbage, those foreign numbers would have been through! the! ROOF!
Anyone ever consider if the proportions might not be influenced by Americans simply not going to see a movie they know is junk? That would skew the numbers, too. Maybe Trek's low foreign take is a good sign.
My theory is that Trek is simply better known in America, and compared with other movies, the backstory is very complicated. All those Klingons and Vulcans and Romulans are confusing. Americans know at least something about the Federation, what it represents, what Starfleet is trying to do, because it's part of our pop culture, but I wouldn't bet that this information is too well known around the world. Most movies (of the "international blockbuster" type) are very simple and require no previous knowledge. Trek is a tougher sell.
That's begging the question: WHY is it different?
I think part of it is that foreign markets are more prone to go see a movie with a huge movie-star name and Americans are more prone to bail quick on movies that get bad word of mouth. Trek and Batman didn't have those big movie-star names (even Bale really isn't that big) but the world of mouth was outstanding; Indy and Angels & Demons had powerhouse stars and shitty reviews. In America, the big name won't save a shitty movie's box office. Overseas, it can. Put Johnny Depp or Will Smith in a movie and it can stink on ice, but the overseas BO will make it worthwhile.
Of course, then there's Transformers. I'm stumped!
Screw it, we got our sequel that's what counts.
Because Americans are so much better at determining what is a good movie? Which is why Transformers 2 is belting Star Trek in the US?
Transformers proportion of foreign money is higher than Trek (somebody quoted it above), so yeah, that supports my thesis.
Sigh. It never ceases to amaze me how the naysayers will try to find ANY number/argument to bash this movie.
Star Trek 09 has broken all domestic Trek box office records. It has exceeded even the most wildest expectations of fans in terms of box office performance. It has received almost universally positive reviews in the media.
And yet...some naysayers look to the foreign numbers and do some simple math...hmmm...almost 252 million domestic and only 125 million foreign...that MUST mean that the foreign results are VERY disappointing! YAY -- Here is a way to bash the movie!!!
When ST09 opened, a Paramount rep was quoted in the media as saying that the goal was 100 million foreign gross (sorry don't have the link but it was widely discussed on here.) Paramount did put a push on the foreign market angle by sending JJ and the cast to many countries to promote the movie. 125 million speaks to the results of this marketing push and the quality of the film...1/3 of the film's global take coming from foreign markets must be a significant success to Paramount!
ST09 has outperformed expectations on virtually EVERY level --- and it has led to a rebirth in Trek.
Star Trek 09 has broken all domestic Trek box office records. It has exceeded even the most wildest expectations of fans in terms of box office performance. It has received almost universally positive reviews in the media.
And yet...some naysayers look to the foreign numbers and do some simple math...hmmm...almost 252 million domestic and only 125 million foreign...that MUST mean that the foreign results are VERY disappointing! YAY -- Here is a way to bash the movie!!!
When ST09 opened, a Paramount rep was quoted in the media as saying that the goal was 100 million foreign gross (sorry don't have the link but it was widely discussed on here.) Paramount did put a push on the foreign market angle by sending JJ and the cast to many countries to promote the movie. 125 million speaks to the results of this marketing push and the quality of the film...1/3 of the film's global take coming from foreign markets must be a significant success to Paramount!
ST09 has outperformed expectations on virtually EVERY level --- and it has led to a rebirth in Trek.
Yeah, Trek's foreign numbers ARE disappointing when compared to other summer blockbusters.
BUT, it's unfair to compare them in the first place since its being compared against franchises that have been fairly successful through the last 10 years (X-Men, Transformers, Terminator, even Ice Age). Trek, on the other hand, is coming off at least a decade of being almost completely ignored by the US mainstream and even moreso by the international audiences (since pretty much all of the TV shows weren't shown in most of the world).
Yes, if you compare the foreign numbers to those of other films this summer, like Angels & Demons, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and Terminator Salvation, Trek's overseas take has been a little disappointing. On the other hand, it's also done far better in the foreign markets than other Trek films have, and considering it has had a higher international gross than Paramount probably anticipated, I think we can safely say that it's done alright for itself. I'm certainly not complaining.
I do wonder, though, what makes stuff like X-Men, Terminator, and Transformers more appealing to foreign audiences than Star Trek, especially when Star Trek has generally gotten far better reviews than those other films. Maybe there's just less familiarity with the franchise as a whole overseas, and many foreign audiences feel they wouldn't get as much out of it. Maybe the film is just seen as "too American" (although I really don't see how such an opinion wouldn't extend to stuff like Transformers and Terminator).
I'd really like to see some sort of a poll conducted in foreign cinemas to find out what precisely is keeping many filmgoers away from Trek.
I do wonder, though, what makes stuff like X-Men, Terminator, and Transformers more appealing to foreign audiences than Star Trek, especially when Star Trek has generally gotten far better reviews than those other films. Maybe there's just less familiarity with the franchise as a whole overseas, and many foreign audiences feel they wouldn't get as much out of it. Maybe the film is just seen as "too American" (although I really don't see how such an opinion wouldn't extend to stuff like Transformers and Terminator).
I'd really like to see some sort of a poll conducted in foreign cinemas to find out what precisely is keeping many filmgoers away from Trek.
I feel that if the film made $1 billion domestically and $330,000,000 internationally, we would still have this thread.
Independence Day performed very well outside the US, and that's about as American as a film can get.
Don't dare wonder about such things though - apparently it is bashing to even consider it...
Trek is just seem as lame to many countries. Consider this: Trek made less than $6 million in Japan and SW:ROTS made $83 million in Japan. There was an article in Geek magazine about how no one really knows Trek in Japan since it wasn't really televised and a lot of people consider it a cheap rip-off of Star Wars. The writer couldn't find anyone who knew and liked Star Trek until he met one guy who turned out to have been born and raised in the US.
Except... he isn't bashing the movie; that's a faulty premise. Blue Trek has been an enthusiastic fan of the movie all along.
You realise that if the sequel ends up with a 50:50 ratio, people will complain the US box office percentages have dropped, and therefore the sequel is a domestic failure.
Hey, plenty of people in North America see Trek as lame too, but that didn't hurt its box office here.
That Japan info is interesting... you'd think that in the days of the internet, anybody from anywhere would be able to easily find out that Star Trek actually predates Star Wars -- but I suppose they just might not care enough to look that up.
And yet, in the 80s, there was a thick, glossy Japanese version of "Starlog" magazine, that ran for several years, always with a large "Star Trek" catalogue of merchandise, and three volumes of "Super-Visual", a beautiful pictorial overview of TOS, TAS, TMP and the first ever pictures of ST II.
I'd also say that it is much more a part of American culture than other places.
Also: fewer theaters not less theaters.
There is this article in Variety (from a month ago) about international boxoffice:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118005090.html?categoryid=13&cs=1
Here is the relevant quote from the article:
Wrong. Some people just like to analyse box office numbers. It's why sites like boxofficemojo exist. It interests some people, the detail, and discussing it. I consider myself to be one of them.
There's a difference between debate and bashing. Don't be so fucking hysterical.
To the topic: it does make one wonder why it didn't do so well internationally. It saw tremendous growth in the US compared to previous movies, but not internationally (Generations took $120m internationally and that was back in 1997). So the new movie did worse abroad than Generations.
I would say they that hype was a big part of this new movie's success. The PR machine was at full force in the US, and it drove the numbers up. But abroad that level couldn't be sustained, so it didn't get as much attention. So it did pretty much 'business as usual'.
The next one will probably do similar.. it has an established base of new fans in the US now, but abroad won't have reached that critical mass. So they can either throw more advertising at it abroad, or let it continue to underperform. With advertising it's basicall a gambling game, with sketchy returns.
Stop being so negative! It did find a new audience. Many of "first fandom" have passed away. The film did not bring in all those millions of dollars because old TOS fans went back a few times.
The ST fanbase watching "Enterprise" was miniscule compared to the size of fandom watching TOS in syndication reruns and first-run TNG.