number6
Vice Admiral
Isn't someone proclaiming this new film a failure now because Trek Toys are selling in the discount bin already?? Those goal posts keep moving all over the place with these people..
weighting of the JJverse
- Thread starter Ronald Held
- Start date
- Status
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Sorry, was changing 'are weighing' to 'weigh' and screwed up == thanks for noticing, should have known I could count on you.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
King and Country, huh? What time zone do you inhabit, the Nexus?
you should have known to count on me, too.
Does the good economic showing of this movie implicitly translate into similar sales for the next one?
Dennis, and other, the film is a failure by our (high/rigid/ethical) standards?
Dennis, and other, the film is a failure by our (high/rigid/ethical) standards?
number6
Vice Admiral
No, but it means that people who liked this film may check out the next one. If it's as good as this one was, it will see some numbers.
The film is only a failure to those who seem to have very rigid exacting standards. That would have happened no matter what. To them, the film was a failure before the script was greenlit.
Maybe not in your town...
Wave 2 figures are coming, so the previous ones must have sold well enough. Here in Oz, they've actually rushed some new twin packs into stores, because demand for four single figures (Kirk, McCoy, Young Spock, Ambassador Spock) has exceeded expectations.
Basing any judgement on the "success" or "failure" of this movie upon the sort of commentary being made here is pretty pointless.
Did anyone, ever, think that this movie was likely to be anything but a "moderate success" (which is has proven to be)? It's not a "blockbuster," but it put "popcorn movie butts in seats."
This doesn't necessarily translate to developing a "following," however.
The "toys" thing is a totally POINTLESS comparison. How many of those toys are being bought by kids who really want to play with them, and how many are being bought by collectors who want two or more of each (one kept in an oxygen-free, cryogenic chamber, along with a vial of their sperm, in case some woman eventually wants to bear their children)?
"Commercial" sales, versus "collector" sales... it's far too early to predict where that's going. I suspect that most of the sales so far have been of the latter category, and thus have ZERO bearing on long-term commercial viability.
This movie has been seen by quite a few people, but notably less than, say, have seen "Hangover" in the same period of time. And I suspect that "Hangover" will end up having a dearer place in most moviegoer's hearts than "Star Trek '09" will have.
We've had a successful Star Trek movie. It's not nearly as "earthshatteringly" successful as the "anti-Fan Trolls" on this BBS would have you believe, however. We can talk about unadjusted dollars, but in adjusted dollars I doubt, very much, that this movie has done as well as any of the first four "TOS" Trek movies.
Remember... a dollar today isn't the same as one from 1979, or 1982. So comparing relative success of, say, TMP or TWOK to ST'09 needs to be done with adjusted dollars.
On that basis, I'd be VERY surprised if this movie did better than those movies did.
Anyone want to run the numbers?
It's a MODERATE SUCCESS. Sufficient to convince PPC and CBS-TV that "Star Trek" isn't a dead property. Enough to warrant CONSIDERATION (not "committment" at this point) to a another follow-on film. Certainly, it's brought in more than it cost, by a fair measure, and that's always the bottom line. I'm personally happy about that, even though I was pretty underwhelmed by this flick.
As far as I'm concerned... this movie was "The Phantom Menace" of Star Trek. It had all the right nods and winks and so forth, and plenty of exciting action sequences (hell, it even had its own version of the "there's always a bigger fish" scene!). But it's not going to be remembered as one of the "classics."
Did anyone, ever, think that this movie was likely to be anything but a "moderate success" (which is has proven to be)? It's not a "blockbuster," but it put "popcorn movie butts in seats."
This doesn't necessarily translate to developing a "following," however.
The "toys" thing is a totally POINTLESS comparison. How many of those toys are being bought by kids who really want to play with them, and how many are being bought by collectors who want two or more of each (one kept in an oxygen-free, cryogenic chamber, along with a vial of their sperm, in case some woman eventually wants to bear their children)?
"Commercial" sales, versus "collector" sales... it's far too early to predict where that's going. I suspect that most of the sales so far have been of the latter category, and thus have ZERO bearing on long-term commercial viability.
This movie has been seen by quite a few people, but notably less than, say, have seen "Hangover" in the same period of time. And I suspect that "Hangover" will end up having a dearer place in most moviegoer's hearts than "Star Trek '09" will have.
We've had a successful Star Trek movie. It's not nearly as "earthshatteringly" successful as the "anti-Fan Trolls" on this BBS would have you believe, however. We can talk about unadjusted dollars, but in adjusted dollars I doubt, very much, that this movie has done as well as any of the first four "TOS" Trek movies.
Remember... a dollar today isn't the same as one from 1979, or 1982. So comparing relative success of, say, TMP or TWOK to ST'09 needs to be done with adjusted dollars.
On that basis, I'd be VERY surprised if this movie did better than those movies did.
Anyone want to run the numbers?
It's a MODERATE SUCCESS. Sufficient to convince PPC and CBS-TV that "Star Trek" isn't a dead property. Enough to warrant CONSIDERATION (not "committment" at this point) to a another follow-on film. Certainly, it's brought in more than it cost, by a fair measure, and that's always the bottom line. I'm personally happy about that, even though I was pretty underwhelmed by this flick.
As far as I'm concerned... this movie was "The Phantom Menace" of Star Trek. It had all the right nods and winks and so forth, and plenty of exciting action sequences (hell, it even had its own version of the "there's always a bigger fish" scene!). But it's not going to be remembered as one of the "classics."
According to Playmates, actually.
Collectors bought much and bought early.. but a lot of those figures going for $30 at conventions are on clearance everywhere else. This isn't a phenomenon unique to Trek, mind you.. T4 figures went like that as well, and Transformers ROTF figures are doing that now.
Seriously when has tie-in material EVER been a big seller in Trek.
Welcome to the corporate mentality folks! Get it in, move it, clear it out for the next tie-in.
I JUST bought a $30 Diamond Select communicator at Blockbuster for $9.99 because a suit somewhere said to get rid of Trek stuff NOW. Great for me!
Playmates Enterprises have not come down one penny at the retail stores- still $30. But they're moving.
The action figures have been slashed, though. Figures, I don't want 'em.
The toy communicators & the phasers from the new movie sit on the shelves, as motionless as a Terminator in liquid nitrogen, no matter what the asking price...
-Just the word from the street from a guy with a kid.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
By and large, movies today are considered successes with much less return vs investment than back then, so that skews things in Abrams' favor a bit.
But if you look at it another way ... TMP cost, say 42mil. Abrams cost 160, though they have rolled it back to 150, which is where it was at before the 'hold for months' thing happened, so it probably doesn't count the additional charges of interest like it should. But either way, this new movie would have to generate close to 3.5 or 4 times the box office revenue of TMP to offset the 150/160 to 42 difference.
The figure that used to be quoted for TMP's box office (which doesn't get quoted anymore was 175 worldwide, so that'd make Abrams have to do well over 600, almost 700 mil to be equivalent.
More recently, the worldwide figure for TMP seems to have magically dropped to 139 or so ... a figure I don't happen to believe, but let's just say okay ... then you still need 500 to 560 mil for Abrams to approximate the return given the cost. I haven't tracked this stuff, but I'm sure RAMA can generate numbers for domestic and int'l, so you can see if it is equivalent to any of these TMP numbers.
If you compare it to most other trekmovies, there is no way you could consider this type of profitability, because the investment is much less and the return is still pretty good, so that Abrams would have to do TDK numbers to compare to KHAN's profitability (about six times its cost just domestic.) That isn't playing fair, I know, I'm just sayin'.
No I'm not against fans I'm against fanatics who are convinced they are the one-true experts of trek no matter have arrogent that makes them sound or the fact that for some of them saying it is horse shit considering must of their complaints about the movie come from badly miss remembering what happened in TOS, though I will admit sometimes people who have valid problems with the movie and express them without sounding like complete jerks are unfairly dumped on.
Now to be fair here I look at this like how Paramount would, which is a complaint that the new movie didn't make more then the imaginary money the other movies would have made had tickets cost as much then as they do know instead of by how much each movie ACTUALLY made. This is the reason i have a problem with this argument its too hypothetical.
I on the other hand see it as Abrams going back to basics and make Star Trek fun again, something that sadly Trek hasn't been in a very long time due to everyone taking it WAY too seriously.
"Pointlessly irrelevant"...
The movie was - bright and shiny - and empty, mindless; but a little fun, maybe.
The movie was - bright and shiny - and empty, mindless; but a little fun, maybe.
I've read some articles here and there that say, for adjusted dollars, Star Trek XI is now the #1 grossing ST movie.
Edit:
Here you go:
article
THANKS, T, wow, I hadn't realized TMP had been THAT sucessful back in the day!! And nice to know that Abram's flick is doing even better at the box office.
Sequel, here we come *crosses fingers as to the quality*
Fannish "standards" with regard to this kind of thing, when explicated, rarely are defensible as particularly high. What they are, most often, are very specific - and therein lie most of the problems.
Well, I guess he's very surprised now.
And we're not even into the DVD release yet (never mind the 24 million dollars that the first-run television rights to this movie went for). DVD sales are going to be amazing. Of course Paramount is happy with this movie.
I agree.
Know what? I liked Jedi. Ewoks- so what?
Insurrection? Picard was cool.
STV? Parts were amusing.
The only fannish BS I can get totally & seriously behind (or start myself, heh heh) is a battle over the FACT that the OS hand phasers are sacred, and not to be redesigned by man in our lifetimes.
Some God said so, I think....
- Status
Similar threads
