Variety: 'Star Trek' moved from Christmas '08 to May '09

[Balthier the Great]

No doubt. There was some anti-Daniel Craig Bond fan who was proclaiming Casino Royale a failure because it didn't perform as well as its opening week competition, Happy Feet. Never mind that they were aimed at entirely different audiences and Casino Royale is the highest grossing Bond film of all time (unadjusted for inflation). The haters will find something to back them up, logic be damned.

But Bond was already fairly popular. No bond movie had ever bombed at the box office in 50 years. That's a bit different than Trek needing a revival and needing to score big at the BO to get more Trek made.

I've always used the first Spiderman and the first Pirates of the Caribbean as examples of films that had little or no built-in fanbase but still managed to do well at the box office. Spiderman had only fans of the comic book and two bad cartoons as its fanbase, and Pirates only had Depp fans as its base.

Spiderman was always well known. It had been both a comic book and a TV show and a cartoon. Unknown? nope. I could see calling a comic book hero unknown if it was something completely obscure -- a Green Lantern movie would be an unknown, just not Spidey.

Pirates had a lot of names behind it -- Jerry Bruckheimer, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, & Kiera Knightly. It was based on a Disney ride that millions ride on every year. We've got Spock and possibly JJ Abrams.

Heck, while we are at it, there is no reason why the original Star Wars film did well in 1977 (except that it was a good film) -- it had nothing specific going for it at the time it opened that would make people want to see it.

American Graffitti. It was a George Lucas film. I'm not sure if Harrison Ford or Carrie Fischer were big stars before Wars, but Harrison was big afterwards.

 

[Tralah]

Star Trek is fairly well known too, and has had movies that have done well in the past. Not the astronomical Star Wars numbers of course, but we wouldn't already have 10 Star Trek movies if Star Trek was so utterly destitute of anyone other than hardcore fans willing to see it. Yes, the last movie was a complete and utter bomb, but it doesn't follow that Star Trek can NEVER do another successful movie again. There are so many different factors with this new movie, so many new precedents, I just cannot fathom how ANYONE here can say with such certainty that this movie is doomed for failure or guaranteed to succeed. There's just too many unknown factors at this point in time.

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

Spiderman was always well known. It had been both a comic book and a TV show and a cartoon. Unknown? nope. I could see calling a comic book hero unknown if it was something completely obscure -- a Green Lantern movie would be an unknown, just not Spidey.

I don't think I used the word 'unknown' to describe Spidey & Pirates...hold on, let me check....

...Nope. I didn't

Spiderman and Pirates DID in fact have a fanbase of sorts (as I said in my post), but that fanbase is nowhere near as large as Star Trek's, nor did those films have the cultural icon Status when they came out that Star Trek enjoys today -- albeit Star Trek's icon status has been diminishing slightly in recent years.

American Graffitti. It was a George Lucas film. I'm not sure if Harrison Ford or Carrie Fischer were big stars before Wars, but Harrison was big afterwards.

I'm not going to equate the quality of Abrams' TV credits with American Graffitti, but his name is probably just a big (if not bigger) a "box-office draw" as Lucas was in 1977, and that's what we are discussing here.

...and I don't understand what Harrison Ford's star power after Star Wars came out has anything to do with people originally wanting to see that film before he was a big star.

*******​

I do agree that 'Star Trek' itself has become synonomous with sci-fi geeks, but not any moreso than Spiderman was associated with comic book geeks. However, Sam Raimi specifically wanted to take Spidey out of the comic book and make it more accessible to the average movie goer...and he succeeded.

Star Trek has become its own worst enemy. The show has had an "inside baseball" mentality in the past 10 years in which the hardcore fans exhibit a "smug elitism" in regards to people who are casual fans. However, I don't think the damage done to the "wide-appeal fanbase" is irreparable, and if Raimi can make Spiderman appeal to the average movie-goer, then Abrams certainly can do the same with the Star Trek franchise. That has been Abrams stated mission, and he is specifically working to remove the "geek" label from Star Trek.

I'm with Sharr on this one -- there is nothing inherent in the concept of 'Star Trek' that would necessarily keep this movie from performing well at the box office. That's not to say it will definitely be a financial and critical success, but there's nothing stopping it.

 

[cardinal biggles]

Star Trek is fairly well known too, and has had movies that have done well in the past. Not the astronomical Star Wars numbers of course, but we wouldn't already have 10 Star Trek movies if Star Trek was so utterly destitute of anyone other than hardcore fans willing to see it.

The first four films certainly did excellent business. Inflation-adjusted to today's dollars, the first four would have certainly reached the top 15 of 2007. (TMP's total adjusts to $261.6m, which would have made it #6 last year.) Even unadjusted, they were pulling in more than the Bond films of the period.

 

[Garth Rockett]

But Bond was already fairly popular. No bond movie had ever bombed at the box office in 50 years.

Oh yeah? Licence to Kill bombed, The Man With the Golden Gun had a very poor showing, and the producers still claim On Her Majesty's Secret Service was unsuccessful, although it actually did pretty well, just not up to expectations (but the public still perceives it as having done poorly). But that's not the point I was making. I was saying no matter how well a movie does, someone will find some statistic they'll use to claim it was a failure.

That's a bit different than Trek needing a revival and needing to score big at the BO to get more Trek made.

Actually, I see the Trek situation very much akin to the Bond films in 1995. After Licence to Kill became the only Bond film to gross less in the US than its production cost, the franchise was seen as out of date, and the producers needed to reinvigorate the franchise. So they recast almost all the major roles (Bond, M, Moneypenny), hired a director who'd never done Bond before, a screenwriter who'd never done Bond before, a composer who's never scored Bond before, etc., and came back with Goldeneye, the highest grossing Bond film up to that point. I think that's a very strong parallel to the situation Trek is in, although the final results remain to be seen.

Batman has overcome much worse public stigma twice. Everyone in the general public still associated Batman with Adam West and camp prior to Tim Burton's 1989 film, and Batman Begins brought the franchise back after Batman and Robin (and let's face it, no matter how bad you think Voyager, Enterprise and Nemesis were, they were all infinitely better than Batman and Robin). There's no reason to think Trek can't do the same.