Christopher said:
RobertScorpio said:
...and we all know who CHEAP Paramount is..
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Paramount's
Star Trek: The Motion Picture was an extremely big-budget production for its time (it was actually in the Guiness Book as the most expensive film ever, but that's actually creative accounting that folds in the development costs for the previous abortive movie and series projects that led up to it). Subsequent Trek films had lower budgets due to the limited box-office success of their predecessors; but the new
Star Trek film is a "tentpole" production for which no expense is being spared. Meanwhile, when TNG and DS9 were on the air, they had pretty much the biggest budgets and most elaborate production values of any shows in first-run syndication.
Paramount has also been behind quite a few big-budget, tentpole movies, including the Indiana Jones films, the
Mission: Impossible films, the Jack Ryan films, and the
Tomb Raider films. I don't think anyone would call those "cheap."
Most expensive shows in first run syndication doesn't quite compare to network show prices ... MIAMI VICE used to have million dollar overruns on single episodes occasionally (like when Johnson directed), and that was before TNG came on. Pattern spending on TNG and DS9 was still only at 85 THOUSAND per show on visual effect as of 93 or 94, which is insanely cheap, roughly one-half of one percent of the budget for ds9, and barely more than that -- 2/3rd of one percent? -- for TNG.
TMP was budgeted at 15 mil, which would have been a decent amount, but by no means megabudget. If Paramount's people had stayed on top of things, I doubt it would have gone up more than 7 or 10 mil, TOPS, but they didn't, and they paid. If they'd spent a little more up front to get different people, and semi-realistic schedules, they wouldn't have had the panic and the megaspend at the end. Shoot, the budget had gone up to 24 or 25 before main unit even finished shooting!
Even when Par spends, they don't always do it right . They spent about 70 or 75 mil on EVENT HORIZON, but wouldn't let them spend a pittance to shoot model pyro, or allocate five mil for an opening sequence that would have made the whole rest of the movie play a lot better. When you cut stupid corners, it is cheap. When you cut corners smartly (TWOK would be a good example about half the time, thanks to Robert Sallin), it isn't cheapness, it is being savvy.
Was Paramount being fiscally responsible when they cancelled TUC for a couple weeks at the beginning of 91 when there was a difference of a million bucks on the budget? They already KNEW they'd get it back many times over on video by then, even if the theatrical version tanked. Seemed more like pettiness or a power play than sound economics.
Paramount was the studio that held out on giving any gross profit points till the trek stars organized and paid for somebody to audit them ... and woo, the movie just came out of the red, what timing!
Trouble is, since folks at Par change, it is hard to ascribe any single motive to behavior ... unless all the folks running stuff have the exact same agenda. But I think trek's credibility with general public has been hurt by a sense of cheapness in the features, and that is because Par would only fund the features up to a certain point that was way below what it should have been IMO. Folks got semi-theatrical experiences from the trekfilms, but it never felt big like it should have on the sequel films.
