Actually largely yes much of this can be explained by it being a bad year or rather a truly bad summer for tentpole movies.
Or maybe just a year of a lot of bland and uninspiring summer movies. What exactly did all these flops offer moviegoers other than the same old rehashed plots in a new format?
The release calendar was far too packed to give anything enough breathing room. The glut of fairly high quality kids or family friendly animated fare dug deeply into the pool of butts to put in seats for the lush budget spectacles. STB released late in the season as audience burnout is starting to set in. With a new loud explody movie every week. And few of them all that good since Captain America, the audiences just tuned out. And even then they really didn't...
An interesting theory (viewer burnout). However, Jason Bourne seems to have done about 20% higher than it was tracking for and Suicide is doing pretty well in presales which suggests that audiences aren't necessarily as burned out as they are disinterested in the movies that have been released. And JB didn't even get that good of reviews. Suicide Squad might also get lesser reviews (less than STB).
The studios over expected. Hollywood is notorious for learning the wrong message. Last year Star Wars raked in a Billion. As did several other large tentpole movies. Which leads every studio to simply assume that their tentpole movie will do that well. Without fully appreciating the subtleties of the IP's in question, and more importantly, without showing any reasonable restraint in budgeting. STB at a $100-120 million production budget would have been a rousing financial success. And just how much does anybody really think those extra 10's of millions bought? Was it anything that the audience remembered 10 minutes after they walked out?
If you think that a Star Trek movie can be made for that amount in this day and age you are not current on the industry. In addition, cutting a production budget from 160 to 120 million while your marketing budget is still going to stay about $150-250 million . . . . does it make sense to try and sell a cheaper movie to audiences (general and foreign) who are attracted to the items you are removing? That sounds like being penny wise and pound foolish.
This movie was a good tight episodic type Star Trek story. If it had been restricted to a traditional good tight Star Trek budget it would have been one of the summers success stories. somewhere along the line Paramount and Hollywood in general forgot the lesson "Do more with less!" At the end of the day there is no fault in the writing, directing, cast, story or execution of STB other than budget. It's not like Ghostbusters or TMNT or BvS where you can see the edit holes and badly hacked story bits scotch taped in all over the place. You can see where those productions went off the rails right there on screen. STB executed well. It's only problem was overspending.
Once again, you act as if overspending was simply due to the frivolous nature of the director and production staff rather than the reality of how movies are made and their associated costs (including overruns). Trust me when I say that producers biggest focus when making movies are how to cut production costs. It's easier said than done.
Honestly if it had been able to stand on its own, without the assorted animated Doggie and Fish movies yipping at its heels it likely would have had a better BO return than either of the previous nuTrek movies. It effectively lost ~ $10-12 million each weekend to the long legs of Secret Life of Pets. It also had a strong counter programming contender at the same time. So much of it was a scheduling issue. But this also shows the big problem. Would the Box Office returns from ST2009 or STID have been enough to bring a good return on a $185 million movie? Hell no! They would be in exactly the same place as this one. And this same story gets repeated Over and over this summer. X-Men, same thing. Third movie in cycle. Obscene budget. Returns reasonable to last three but nowhere near what the new budget needs. TMNT 2 same deal. Tarzan likely would have been the best unexpected financial success of the summer if they had controlled the budget.
First of all, Pets and Dory had little to NO impact on Star Trek Beyond. You couldn't have a more differing audience set if you had put it up against "A Tale of Two Cities - the Musical!". STB has an average viewer in his late 30's and 40's. Those movies you think "stole" STB's box office compare with an average viewer in his pre-school to late elementary school ages. Go look at all the numerous posts about the age of people in screenings posters have attended. Plus those movies were in their what . . . . 4th and 6th weekends which means it didn't even impact screen count. You are grasping at straws there.
Star Trek likely is in the best position of all the late summer underperforming blockbusters. The home market for the movie is well known, well documented and about as faithful and dependable as any group of consumers will ever get. It will make back its money easy on DVD/BluRay and Streaming. Others might not be so lucky (looking at you TMNT's and Ghostbusters.)
This is true, although the home market is a shell of what it was during its heyday. STB should still be able to (hopefully) make $30-60 million of video sales. Studios typically keep around 70% of home video revenue. But this is a paltry amount compared to the past when it seemed like every movie used to be able to make between $40-100 million in sales. To make a point. Star Trek 09 made almost $200 million. Star Trek Into Darkness made around $85 million. In 2009 though, 22 movies made $60 million or more in video sales. Last year, the number of films that cracked $60 million was less than half that. And a lot of the top sellers in home video are often animated films.
The only thing remaining this summer that will do truly well is Suicide Squad. That's tapping into a few inter-sectional points of fandom. Some view it as like Deadpool. Some are going for the Batman/Joker stuff. Some because it is a "Gangsta Comic Type Movie". It will play well. Especially since there is little else between it and Thanksgiving. Other movies such as the fascinating looking Kubo are going to get steamrolled. (why oh why can Laika never catch a break?) It should have released either towards Thanksgiving or Christmas and the holidays (but everyone stays away from Star Wars movies) or in the early Spring when it could run the summer as a long legged 3-4 lace kids movie like Pets and Dory. August is death.
Laika can't catch a break because people don't care for stop motion animation. It's inefficient and takes a long time to make.
Release STB in November? Against Doctor Strange, Fantastic Beasts and the Holiday's themselves??? Release in December against Rogue one (a much more popular movie franchise of the same genre)? Or in hindsight does it seem like it would have been smart to open in February against Deadpool, in March against Batman V Superman, in April against Jungle Book or May against Civil War? And that doesn't include all the other movies that could have been competition but basically disappointed.
You only have a (roughly) 9 week release and the number of screens you are allocated is as much based on how well you do and what movies are releasing before and after you. Do you want to spend screen time in a portion of the year where box office attendance is half of what it is in the summer? There's a reason there is often less competition at certain times of the year . . . it's because people tend to not go to the movies in those times. That doesn't make them a great place to slot your big blockbuster release.
