You want to see a rush job, look at TMP ( before the director's cut ) that was a rush job, yet it turned out pretty good none the less, even with redoing the sets to go from TV series to big screen & switching FX companies mid-production what we got was nothing short of amazing.
HOWEVER, watching that film over & over through the years showed us it's flaws of being a rushed job due to the set in stone release date Paramount had given. This time there's a huge difference, this isn't a brand new from scratch film, it's a squeal and most of the stuff is just sitting in a warehouse on Paramount's lot somewhere, nothing needs to be made from scratch as far as the Enterprise goes.
Well, maybe we'll get that Non-Brewery set everyone & their grandma seems to be screaming for 'round these parts, I think it made perfect logic that the lower decks were all greasy & grimy & industrial like even if it is 200 years in the future or whatever have you.
ILM still has the big E on their computers saved in a big old file as well, not like everything was trashed after the first film was done & finished with, this isn't Rick Berman we're talking about here who saw to it that sets were trashed once filming was done on TNG, DS9, Voyager, & Enterprise.
Lord knows how much that must hit Paramount's pocket seeing as each TNG film had to rebuild the sets over & over due to this stupid practice of his, glad he's gone now.
Anyway I wouldn't worry unless we had 6 months 'till release and nothing set in stone as far as scripts go, sets go & so forth & so on, THEN and only then will I worry about it, so far we're right on schedule when it comes to modern movie making, it no longer takes 2 years to make a film, just to plan it all out, contracts, funding, legal type stuff we would find boring as all get out.
Long gone are the days were studios say "5 YEARS IN THE MAKING" on the poster, that's no longer something to be proud of, nowadays it's all about FASTER then the next guy, get it made as quickly as you can, after the long drawn out legal stuff just to cover their butts if something goes wrong in the 6 months of production.
This is why the turn around time is so short on some films, they get all that taking care of before the first film is even shot, scripted, actors assigned, ect ect ect. This isn't the case here as Paramount wanted to do this on a film by film base, granted after the HUGE success of the first that strategy might change, we'll have to wait & see.
Think of modern movie making as an automated assembly line making cars, that's why each studio can have multiple films out in the same year, if that one under-performs, it's okay as they have another that might be a break-away hit, it's all still a gamble, but it's better to gamble with a lot of films then one or two, seeing the cost of making these has gone WAY up recently.
We use to scoff at the very idea of a movie costing over just $1 mil, now the average is $100 mil per film, and we see every dime on the screen when it comes to FX & ect.
I don't see films getting cheaper to make as well, the audience's taste for 'hyper-reality' is getting higher & higher as the tech gets better & better at doing it.
On the same note the same people want the films to be made faster & faster, the whole instant gratification thingy, this is why the studios have streamlined the process, well, except the legal part, that still takes ages ;-)
We also do not know any further casting yet or anything else. I'm sure they're well into pre-production right now though. I wouldn't be surprised if production started in the summer time though.
