If Star Trek Has A Disappointing Box Office...?

[Dayton3]

What lessons do you think the powers that be will take from it?

Given the hype and generally favorable reviews, what do you think Paramount will think caused a disappointing performance?

Will they conclude that the problems were external to the movie? That is a poorly thought out release date and too much summer competition?

Or will they see the problems as internal? That is that a remake of the original was an error?

Any thoughts? Other options?

Note, I have no idea currently what would be considered a disappointing, good, or spectacular box office performance.

 

[SteveJRogers]

What lessons do you think the powers that be will take from it?

Given the hype and generally favorable reviews, what do you think Paramount will think caused a disappointing performance?

Will they conclude that the problems were external to the movie? That is a poorly thought out release date and too much summer competition?

Or will they see the problems as internal? That is that a remake of the original was an error?

Any thoughts? Other options?

Note, I have no idea currently what would be considered a disappointing, good, or spectacular box office performance.

I think they would just conclude that the franchise isn't viable as an ongoing TV/movie franchise and just keep doing the licencing thing with the comic books and novels. Keep churning out the remastered episodes, every now and then do retrospectives and just conclude that all good things...

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

They will conclude that Star Trek is done and dead, and find much cheaper ways of exploiting their Trek trademarks than we have ever seen before.

 

[Tulin]

They will re-imagine TREK as a tv show and call it "Star Trek Babies". We will see baby Kirk, Spock, Uhura and Sulu playing in the Starfleet créche while their parents go out on adventures. In this show, the babies will climb through the ducts and have adventures of their own.

 

[Lynn Minmay]

It won't.

 

[Starbreaker]

It's hard to come up with any ideas considering this is going to be a huge cash cow.

 

[Dayton3]

Considering the level of competition I wouldn't place bets on that. What does everyone see out there that indicates box office success.

Remember, in movies quality of product and good reviews doesn't guarantee box office success.

Far from it.

 

[Captain Robert April]

They figured Watchmen was gonna make a ton o' money, with huge buzz and pretty good reviews, and that one dropped off the radar like it was in a power dive.

 

[USS Gettysburg]

Considering the level of competition I wouldn't place bets on that. What does everyone see out there that indicates box office success.

Remember, in movies quality of product and good reviews doesn't guarantee box office success.

Far from it.

Proof of at least a trend towards success: http://sev.prnewswire.com/entertainment/20090505/LA1107605052009-1.html

and there was another article I can't find right now that said that Star Trek was outselling Wolverine 3 to 1 last week in pre-sales. Even more interesting was that Wolverine's pace for pre-sales was out performing last years Iron Man by 3 to 1. I'm not doing that math but you get the drift.

[EDIT]NEVERMIND. Found it! http://screenrant.com/wolverine-outselling-iron-man-ticket-sales-rob-6939/

 

[Karnbeln]

Personally, I don't really see the competition. Wolverine will be less busy in its second week, and Transformers is still a bit far on the horizon. But we'll see.

Anyway, no, I don't think they'll blame it on rebooting the franchise, they know the amount of people who ditched it because they can't tolerate that it's NOT CANON!!!! are, while in force on message boards, a slim portion of any respectable movie's gross. There may be some blame on the writing and producing team, but I don't think it will be measurable against the overwhelmingly obvious answer: Star Trek is dead as a franchise. Its stigma in social circles is too complete to make money no matter how you re-invent it, how you promote it, how many rave reviews it gets. The consumer looks at it with disdain and visions of smelly fanboys. There is no use beating a dead horse. Star Trek served Paramount well for 40 years, but after 5 series and 11 feature films, its time has passed. There is no helping it.

If, in the months after it leaves theatres, the word of mouth is still positive and DVD sales show that word spread that the new Star Trek movie was good, there may be enough hope left in the Paramount offices for the suits to give JJ another go with a decreased budget. Otherwise, the franchise as a filmed entity will die, either permanently or until 15, 20 years from now someone decides to give that dusty old property another rehash.

 

[Cheebo]

They figured Watchmen was gonna make a ton o' money, with huge buzz and pretty good reviews, and that one dropped off the radar like it was in a power dive.

64% RT score isn't comparable to a 100% RT score in terms of reviews.

 

[RAMA]

Given the hype and generally favorable reviews, what do you think Paramount will think caused a disappointing performance?

.

http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=2907587&postcount=291

 

[Aragorn]

Well for him 64% is awesome for a non-Trek movie and 100% is poor for this particular Trek movie.

Paramount will still want to milk the Trek cow, but instead of big budget movies, we'd probably get the relatively cheap straight-to-DVD (TV premiere) stuff like with Stargate.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I think what needs to be abandoned is the whole idea of Star Trek as a movie franchise. The only reason it worked for so many years is that the movies were the only way to see new onscreen material, but once the tv series took off, the movies became somewhat unnecessary.

It's a pretty easy argument to make that for the cost of that one movie, they could produce more than five seasons of a new series, with a lot less risk and better ability to respond to audience concerns. Plus, with a tv series, an established backstory isn't a limitation, it's a gold mine.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

They figured Watchmen was gonna make a ton o' money, with huge buzz and pretty good reviews, and that one dropped off the radar like it was in a power dive.

64% RT score isn't comparable to a 100% RT score in terms of reviews.

It's also not true. Everyone involved with "Watchmen" were pretty cautious about their expectations, because they understood the difficulty of the material. The movie underperformed a bit even given those expectations, but very very few people other than enthusiastic fans on the Internet were predicting a blockbuster. And even most favorable reviews of the movie contained major caveats concerning - among other things - the pacing and lack of narrative drive. One of the "analysts" at Box Office Prophets, for example, predicted it to be a major hit while another predicted that it would have a 40 million dollar opening weekend and an eventual gross of 120 million dollars tops. In other words, predictions were all over the map.

The "everyone predicted 'Watchmen' would be a huge success and they were wrong" meme that's been going around this week is an invention for use as a strawman.

 

[StarTrek1701]

If Star Trek Has A Disappointing Box Office...?

It won't.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

I think they would just conclude that the franchise isn't viable as an ongoing TV/movie franchise

Being serious as this thread's topic covers a possibility I think that Paramount would re-boot again in 5-7 years a feature film.
Marvel Enterprises did the same thing with "Hulk" and last years re-boot.

The Fandango advance ticket sales are a very good indication of a success as well as this quote about the Summer's films.
I also do not think interest will drop off after week 1.

 

[CaptainHawk1]

They figured Watchmen was gonna make a ton o' money, with huge buzz and pretty good reviews, and that one dropped off the radar like it was in a power dive.

Where do you come up with this stuff? There was NEVER any speculation that Watchmen was going to make a ton of money, primarily because it was Rated R and secondarily because it was outdated and appealed only to the fans of the graphic novel, That thing was held up in the courts so long that they were finally glad just to be able to release the thing.

And Watchmen ain't Star Trek, hater.

No need to make shit up just because you want the movie to fail to show everybody how right you were.

 

[USS Gettysburg]

They figured Watchmen was gonna make a ton o' money, with huge buzz and pretty good reviews, and that one dropped off the radar like it was in a power dive.

64% RT score isn't comparable to a 100% RT score in terms of reviews.

Fat lady hasn't sung on the reviews yet. Most of the cream of the crop is still out there and 33 is a long way from 130.

 

[CaptainHawk1]

Given the hype and generally favorable reviews, what do you think Paramount will think caused a disappointing performance?

Generally favorable? What part of Universal Acclaim in my avatar aren't you getting?