Let's be honest here. Most of us are going to end up seeing both movies in the theater, several months apart.
As I always say, STAR TREK and STAR WARS are not rival sports team. There's no rule that says you can't root for both.
And then there are some of us who, for various reasons, will end up seeing neither of them in the theatre.
I saw the first nuTrek movie on the Space Channel. I was already paying for that channel for other reasons, so it didn't cost extra. I saw the second nuTrek movie because my cable company gave me a free "on demand" coupon. So I had access to the movie for 48 hours, and ended managing to see it 3 times. It did not improve on repeated viewings, so thank goodness I didn't actually have to pay for it. Now it's on Canadian Netflix (the only Star Trek available to us that isn't TNG). I have not been the slightest bit tempted to see it a fourth time.
As for Star Wars... I saw the first 3 movies (IV-VI) in the theatre. But I haven't stepped foot in a movie theatre since last century, and I don't miss it. I'll watch it when it comes to Netflix, and if it's good I'll praise it (anything with Harrison Ford has to be at least slightly good, and I don't recall hating anything I've seen him in before).
But if this nuTrek movie is all we get for the 50th anniversary, I'm going to feel cheated. Even Doctor Who threw in some scraps for the Classic Who fans, with Paul McGann's "Night of the Doctor" webisode, Peter Davison's "The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot," and Tom Baker's cameo as The Caretaker.
Somehow, there has to be something for the non-nuTrek fans, whether it's a TV special or something else.
I'm getting old and I don't want to see anything new. I enjoyed the other versions of "Star Trek", but really what we're getting now is new, after a fashion. It's Kirk, Spock, and the others with something they seldom had before, an ample budget and consistently high production values all around.
What a pity they didn't have a decent story or actors who could convince me they were playing Kirk, Spock, Uhura, etc. instead of nuKirk, nuSpock, and nuUhura. Note I didn't mention McCoy/nuMcCoy. He seems to be irrelevant to the nuTrek movies because all he does is be a smart-alec with sitcom one-liners.
We are all getting older. But if the quality of these movies doesn't improve, I suspect I will be celebrating the 50th anniversary by diving into my stack of old '70s/'80s print 'zines.
Seems to me we started getting that back when Worf took over TNG and DS9 with all those Klingon-centric episodes that bored me to the point that I nearly stopped watching the series. (sanitized for that era of TV, of course)
Trilogies have been around a long time, starting with printed material. Think of how many science fiction novel series come in trilogy format, even if that's not how the author originally envisioned them. An example would be C.J. Cherryh's
Cyteen. That's a huge book, but it's also been published as a trilogy (which is the format in which I first read it). Isaac Asimov's early Foundation stories were collected in novel form as three books, and it was a long time before there was a fourth. And not only SF, but fantasy: any RPG player here should be familiar with the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms novels, most of which were parts of either trilogies or sextets.
So three is not a new number. It may be relatively new for movies, but it's been part of entertainment marketing for a long time. After all, if you want people to pay more money, it helps if they're willing to pay to find out What Happens Next.
Sounds like a diplomatic thing to say...
From a marketing perspective, you don't want to hype something too much, too early--otherwise people will be sick of hearing about it by the time you finally have something to sell tickets to. "Huh, a new STAR TREK movie? I thought that came out already?"
The general audience does not have a long attention span, so you don't want to shoot your wad too early, publicity-wise.
That there's not a huge push yet for a movie that is still a year away is hardly cause for alarm.
(I've actually had this conversation with book authors before. There's no point in publicizing a new book too long before its pub date, because the public will have forgotten any early reviews or publicity by the time the book is actually on sale. Better to hype a book when people can actually buy it, instead of expecting the public to remember all that premature publicity a year later.)
Oh, I dunno... you mention here that you've got a new Star Trek book coming, so I head over to amazon.ca to see what information they've got on it, and if it's listed as available for pre-order, I put it on my wish list (which I consult every couple of months or so). When your book is available for purchase, I buy it.
But then I suppose not everyone plans their book purchases months in advance.