Star Trek‘s always been one of the big two space franchises for the past 50 years. Trek’s got a leg-up on Star Wars with television, as SW‘s just getting started on the small screen. Trek’s big hurdle’s always been the films.
The franchise has a few great films (Wrath of Khan, I’m talking to you), but the priority’s always television. The ten films in the franchise made returns at the box office, but this is due to tight film budgets between the $20-40 million range.
All of that changed when J.J. Abrams jumped on-board in 2009. His reboot trilogy nabbed higher budgets ranging from $140-$190 million range. This led to bigger box office returns, averaging in the $335-467 million range.
The problem arises when you look at how much the film needs to make in order to be considered profitable. Paramount Pictures needs returns now. Simon Pegg tells Games Radar that the new trilogy’s pretty much over because Paramount can’t severely cut the budget:
“The fact is, Star Trek movies don’t make Marvel money. They make maybe $500 million at the most, and to make one now, on the scale they’ve set themselves, is $200 million. You have to make three times that to make a profit.
I don’t feel like the last one… They didn’t really take advantage of the 50th anniversary. The regimen at the time dropped the ball on the promo of the film. And we’ve lost momentum.
I think losing Anton [Yelchin] was a huge blow to our little family, and our enthusiasm to do another one might have been affected by that. So I don’t know.”
It looks like the current Star Trek trilogy will die where it’s at. Trek isn’t slowing down on the small screen. The next film has to take a big budget cut in order to get greenlit by Paramount.
Star Trek: Discovery recently wrapped it’s third season shoot, while Picard is halfway through airing its first season.
