ST4 budget: How low will you go?

[Relayer1]

Would love to see them cut the budget significantly. It would force them to keep the action sequences to a minimum and have the movie mostly be character stuff.

In principle I agree, but outside of Urban and Quinto I really don't like this cast enough for that either. The noisy fast paced action distracts from that.

It could be best to just...stop.

 

[Peach Wookiee]

Yeah, and then we get the immediate complaint that it comes across like just a two-part TV episode.

Precisely. I admit that Insurrection came across to me that way...

 

[Shalashaska]

Why can't there be more Nicholas Meyers, god dammit!

 

[BillJ]

ST4 will take place entirely on a large rubber raft. The filming will be "on location" in the pool at the Los Angeles YMCA and Scotty will be played by a trained housecat.

And will still cost more than $100 million to make.

 

[Garak's favorite spy]

Speaking of budget cutting, it's always fascinating to me that Wrath of Khan, which all agree is the perfect Star Trek film, re-used all that drydock footage from The Motion Picture.
If that happened today, there would be OUTRAGE among fans. It was a different era though, in 1982. The entire movie experience was different. Geez, The Motion Picture had an overture, and that was only 3 years before, in 1979.

 

[KGator]

I think a budget of $125 they could make a good trek film. Or maybe film 2 films with budget of about $200/250. Paramount knows they have an audience.
. . . . . . I heard the rule of thumb for a movie to make a budget is that the box office has to be at least twice the $ as the budget. So STB has to make at least about $400 million to be considered a profit.

Considering they will still be spending $150-200 million on marketing they are not going to reduce the production budget to a point where it could give the impression of a "cheaply made" movie. Foreign audiences still love special effects and production values. Especially when studios are selling films in high resolution and 3D formats.

As complicated as movie budgets are, the rule of thumb you described usually applies. It is generally the case that overall revenue will be close to but higher than the final box office if your film is domestic heavy and lower if it has a higher foreign percentage. Since marketing budgets are often as much as production budgets (or more) on most tentpole productions it kind of balances out for the rule of thumb you mentioned. It is less accurate though on lower budget films.

 

[Mudd]

They're not going to make another one of these movies on the cheap. It'll be a big summer movie, or nothing at all.

Exactly so.

 

[One Lucky Red Shirt]

Yeahs good point gator. A budget of $150 million before marketing costs sound reasonable. Still a decent amount to make a good big budget film. So far beyonds made $160 million worldwide. Not great but not bad either. So im sure paramount might slash the budget slightly on the next one if there is a 4.

 

[photon70]

http://hnmag.ca/the-bottom-line/what-star-trek-beyond-did-for-bc/

About US$53m was spent in Vancouver including salary for almost 4000 locally based crew and construction of Enterprise sets.

With 49% rebate, the studio got about $26m back.

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Real-Reason-Star-Trek-Beyond-Decided-Shoot-Dubai-99987.html

Also US$32m was spent in Dubai. With 30% rebate, this is about $10m.

So in rough figures, out of $185m, the studio actually spent $149m for STB??