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STID "tracking" for $85-90 million opening [U.S. box office]

I think hiding Khan was a mistake. I don't see where the movie really gained anything by keeping it a secret. The reveal itself was kind of "meh." The artistic merits certainly don't outweigh any publicity gains they might of otherwise had.

And, without any proof to the contrary, have pin that blunder on Abrams.

Vyse said:
Heck, you can argue that the 2009 film is darker due to the destruction of Vulcan.
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I agree.

They also liked to play the "it's a very different kind of film" card a lot. Except it wasn't. The plotting/pacing was almost identical to the first one.
 
There`s a lot of reasons why the movie didn`t get the box office that was predicted (the long gap between movies, the lack of actually promoting the plot) etc. But the big reason was the fact that younger audiences stayed away. Which means the next movie (and there will be a next movie whether Paramount keeps Abrams or not...and I`m leaning towards not) it will be made to appeal to younger audiences....which is not necessarily a good thing.
 
Gitesh Pandya ‏@giteshpandya 15h
Top Trek debut pre-JJ was 1996's FirstContact w/ $30.7M. Factor in
2013 prices 3D/IMAX & 4day admissions close to STID's.

man they really dropped the ball on the TNG movies after FC didnt they?
 
Phily B said:
Gitesh Pandya ‏@giteshpandya 15h
Top Trek debut pre-JJ was 1996's FirstContact w/ $30.7M. Factor in
2013 prices 3D/IMAX & 4day admissions close to STID's.

man they really dropped the ball on the TNG movies after FC didnt they?
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First Contact had the Borg, that's probably Trek's biggest seller in terms of storyline. Insurrection's fountain of youth idea was a slight step down from that.
 
Kpnuts said:
First Contact had the Borg, that's probably Trek's biggest seller in terms of storyline. Insurrection's fountain of youth idea was a slight step down from that.
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The problem is that they couldn't come up with any interesting TNG film scripts outside the Borg. They did the movies just because they thought Trek fans would watch anything. If they don't care, why should we?

TNG was far better as a show than movies. I'd rather watch any of the countless great episodes from the show over any of TNG movies.
 
Going to be interesting to see how this fares compared to 09 Trek.

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Flake said:
Something overlooked by everyone when adjusting the old movies for ticket price inflation from 1979-1991 onward is the population of NA has increased by a great deal. Even though ST09 sold the most tickets of any Star Trek movie, the percentage of the population that went to see it was much less than TMP/TWOK/TVH maybe even TSFS?
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True, and the funny part of it all is that for all of the in-house hype about this reboot production, the general public is not buzzing about this film at all. Early in the year, people were anticipating Iron Man (and easter eggs / subplots to future Marvel movies), but few--if any were looking forward or even mentioning ST. I've heard more public and industry talk about The Lone Ranger (of all concepts) than ST.

The status ST once enjoyed as "something to see" is not there anymore, but that's not entirely the fault of the underwhelming JJ films; years of lackluster, or just plain awful Berman TV series sent a torpedo into the body that has ST's cultural positon still in the ICU.
 
AbramsIsSatan said:
Iron Man 3 has already made a billion dollars worldwide (with a budget of only 200 million). It's opening weekend was 174 million. Paramount has to be disappointed with Star Trek in comparison.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=ironman3.htm
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ST has never had the appeal of the 'big superhero movies'... There have been much bigger hits than ST, but also many, many films with a similar (or even bigger) budget that have done far worse... In the end, STID will be a hit, but a modest one, rather than a monster hit like IM3. And I'm okay with that, because I think STID is an incredible film, so much more better than IM3.... I'd rather have a decent hit that I truly love, than a monster hit that I really can't connect to...
 
AbramsIsSatan said:
Iron Man 3 has already made a billion dollars worldwide (with a budget of only 200 million). It's opening weekend was 174 million. Paramount has to be disappointed with Star Trek in comparison.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=ironman3.htm
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Yeah, but it was a better film in spite of its issues. Quite enjoyable, towards the end even touching, and I'll be getting it on DVD. I can't say the same for STID.

Phily B said:
What they needed more of in the marketing.

- Klingons
- Khan
- Spock
- Vengeance firing phasers on the Enterprise

Too secretive, especially for a sequel 4 years later. I remember people on this board saying it's way too secretive, JJ Abrams would go onto a chat show and show 3 frames of it...which was what..six months before release? We knew nothing.
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I'd say no to your list only because I think that would have made the ads even more misleading. The Klingons were barely used, and not used well, Khan went by a different name for most of the film and was definitely a hit-and-miss bad guy (that might be good kind of?), Spock (don't get me started) just... wasn't, and well I guess the Vegeance firing on Enterprise would work. There was definitely a lot of action.

The sad thing for me is that it was mostly dumb action that felt like it was piles and piles of crash-crash-bang-bang-boom-boom-'splosion-run-run-crash-crash.....................'splosion.

One thing that would have been honest would have been to make Kirk the center of every ad because that was definitely the case in the film.
 
There were never any expectations that STID would perform at the same level as IM3. That would be totally unrealistic.

As far as how good the films are, that is all subjective. I still think the only good IM film is the first one. IM3 was no better than IM2 in my opinion, I was bored to tears watching IM3.
 
Iron Man 3 would've made much less at the box office if the Avengers did not come out last year. The first two got to 600m worldwide, IM3 will make it to over double that.

I too was bored watching IM3, though I have my issues with STID getting bored was not one of them :)
 
The ironic thing is that previous Trek films have always talked about having "the best villian since Khan" or "we have another Khan". I remember how ridiculous it got in the 90s and early 2000s. Soran was supposed to be Khan in GEN back in 1994. Then Ru'afo was supposed to be Khan in INS, then Shinzon was the next Khan in NEM.

The Khan silliniess wasn't limited to the TNG movies, I think I even remember reading about comparsions of Sybok to Khan around the time TFF came out. Khan, Khan, Khan, so many Trek films have tried to replicate a singular manipulative villian to the lengths of Khan.

ITD actually HAS freakin' KHAN, and they don't even want to brag about it!!! They having the villian to end all villians in Trek lore here. J.J. and the marketing department really dropped the ball by being so damn secretive about Khan. Even people that don't know Trek that well have heard of Khan at some point, they could have told everyone "we have the Joker of our universe in this movie, you better come see it!"

But face it, Trek will never be as mainstream or kid friendly as Star Wars or Batman. Ofcourse, we all know this is not new, this was the case back 30 years ago. What did a typical kid want to see? Vader and Luke in Return of the Jedi or Mr. Spock talking about "the needs of the many" in Wrath of Khan? That whole dork/loser sitgma is powerfully attached to the franchise, so it's amazing that despite that Trek still puts up very respectable summer box office numbers. Just not the numbers Paramount was hoping for. There's obviously a ton of closet Trek fans out there. And even Star Wars took some damage in the public cool-O-meter with the lackluster prequel movies and and the rabid fans dressed up was Wookies or Stormtroppers running around with lightsabers.
 
Out Of My Vulcan Mind said:
Vyse said:
Yeah, Paramount opening "Star Trek: Nemesis: 5 days before "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" was idiotic.
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It did badly right from the start, though. It lost its opening weekend to Maid in Manhattan, making it the only Trek film to fail to open at #1.
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Definitely, but the close proximity also hurt it greatly I'm sure. While LOTR is fantasy, it was arguably the most anticipated movie of the year. Both are genre films that are action/adventure. So for the average movie goer, why would they see ST:N, when LOTR:TTT is coming out 5 days later.

I'm sure the terrible reviews played a role in how poorly it did also.
 
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