In 2011, multiple friends asked me the same question, seeking out my opinion as a film fan: Is J.J. Abrams really the next Spielberg?  It was an understandable question.  His new movie at the time, Super 8, was produced by Spielberg, and it was purposefully made to look like a long lost Spielberg movie from the 80s.  However, my knee-jerk response was something along the lines of “Oh, hell no” followed by “Why can’t we just let J.J. Abrams be J.J. Abrams?”  My friends would answer, “Because J.J. Abrams doesn’t seem particularly interested in being J.J. Abrams.”  In truth, I meant why must we compare one director to another, but Abrams invites such comparisons upon himself.  He’s known for lens flares and mystery box narratives (The Force Awakens has the latter, not the former), but also for scenes which will broadly recall other movies in a way that toes the line between homage and theft (although don’t all great filmmakers steal from the other greats?).

With The Force Awakens, Abrams has again pulled off an insanely entertaining act of cinematic imitation, delivering a movie which feels like something made by George Lucas or one of his hired guns on the sequels in the original trilogy.  Some have despaired that for as entertaining as the movie is, it doesn’t actually break new ground for the franchise, remembering that even with their many, many faults the prequels were at least trying to do something new.  Some say screw that noise.  For the first time since 1983, we got something which undeniably feels like a Star Wars movie!  Other, far more general fans may simply be wondering who J.J. Abrams is, e.g., What are some of the other things he’s done?

That last part is difficult to answer because Abrams is that new breed of Hollywood heavyweight who pretty much does everything [see also: Joss Whedon, Guillermo del Toro].  He’s created, written and directed multiple TV shows (Felicity, Alias, Lost) and produced countless others (e.g., Almost Human, Fringe).  He’s also written books and produced movies he didn’t direct (Cloverfield).  Way back in the day, he wrote the script for Regarding Henry.  Counting Force Awakens, he’s now directed five movies, and now that he’s fixed the Star Wars  film franchise he’ll recede to the background and let other people direct the sequels as he produces from afar.

He’s wanted to make a Star Wars movie for as long as he’s been interested in making movie.  As such, The Force Awakens is Abrams living out his childhood dream, and in so many ways it is the culmination of his directing career.  Buzzfeed recently got him to open up about each one of his movies:

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Clik here to view.The Film: Mission Impossible 3 (2006)

Aka: The One With Philip Seymour Hoffman as the Bad Guy

Aka 2: The One Where Ethan Hunt Gets a Wife

“I was so excited,” Abrams said. But when he read the existing script, he realized, “I just could never have directed it — it just wasn’t something I would have known how to do. I pitched the idea of getting to know who Ethan Hunt was when he wasn’t the superstar spy,” Abrams said. “What is he like as a man? What is he like when he’s home?”

“The learning curve was significant in some ways because it was the first movie I ever did, and it was a lot to learn quickly,” Abrams said. “But it was also learning with some of the best in the business, and someone, in Tom Cruise, who is just such a driven and knowledgeable force of nature.

“It was one of those amazing opportunities to see that on a scale that wasn’t just your group of friends with a camera that you were renting, but rather a pro, triple-A, amazing crew being open to trying things and figuring out how to make it work,” he said. “It ended up being as challenging as any other sequence, but one of the most fun sequences to work on in the movie.”

It was both “hugely different” and “the same exact thing” from what he was used to. “It doesn’t matter if you’re shooting on the banks of the river in Rome across from the Vatican or if you’re shooting in your parents’ bedroom. It’s always: What are we doing here? What is the story?” he said. “It was wildly, like, old-pair-of-shoes familiar.”

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Clik here to view.The Film: Star Trek (2009)

Aka: The One That Turned Star Trek Into an Action Film Franchise

Aka 2: The One With All the Lens Flare

Aka 3: The One Where Spock Got His Groove Back

Aka 4: The Movie Abrams Only Made Because He Really Wanted to Make Star Wars & Figured This Was Close Enough

“It was definitely an education in scale,” he said. “When you’re doing a space adventure and you do an establishing shot, it needs to be a planet — it’s not just a building.”

“The story of our film was that a new timeline arose out of an event where the character of Spock goes back in time, therefore the characters that were going to come together were literally the characters that people knew from the show,” Abrams continued. “So we were 100% taking Gene Roddenberry’s lead.”

That meant, of course, also following in Roddenberry’s revolutionary footsteps in the cast’s diversity. “It was important to me, in that I very much appreciated what Roddenberry was doing in 1966, in a time when it was not common to have a multicultural, multiethnic cast — and having women in positions of authority and power,” Abrams said. “Working on a movie like Star Trek, you learn how important those choices were to people who saw themselves in those shows in ways that they hadn’t before. So it was something we were thrilled to get to continue.”

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Clik here to view.The Film: Super 8 (2011)

Aka: The One With That Awesome Train Crash Sequence

“I wanted to tell a story that felt like an Amblin movie,” said Abrams, citing Spielberg’s production company that had made E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, The Goonies, and Back to the Future, among many others. Getting Spielberg on board was not difficult, Abrams said: “I called Steven Spielberg and said, ‘Would you want to do a movie called Super 8 about kids making movies?’ And he said yes. Because he had done the same thing when he was a kid.”

“I felt somehow that I never quite solved how to reconcile the supernatural genre element with the human drama/comedy element.”

“Certain things worked; certain scenes were good; certain relationships I was really happy with. But ultimately, I couldn’t look anyone in the eye and say, ‘The script is great,’” he said. “It wasn’t that there was anything that I felt overtly didn’t work, but I wish I had better integrated this alien/monster/sci-fi story with the emotional, sort of comedic story of these kids and what they were going through. It just felt like the last third of the movie didn’t have the sense of inevitability that I wish it did.”

Abrams, who may be his own worst critic, concluded by saying: “You know, you work as hard as you can to try to fix it as you’re going, but I didn’t feel like I was going in having nailed it.”

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Clik here to view.The Film: Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

Aka: The Wrath of Spock

Aka 2: The One That Made Loads of Money But Went Over So Poorly the Abrams-less Sequel Is Pretty Much Ignoring It

“I take full responsibility for this — I was encouraging the writers in certain directions, and we were working on the script and putting it together,” Abrams said. “But by the time we started shooting, and this was literally at the very beginning of the shoot, there were certain things I was unsure of.”

“Any movie, any story has a fundamental conversation happening during it,” he continued. “There’s a fundamental argument; there’s a central question. And I didn’t have it.”

“It was a little bit lightweight, ultimately, that Kirk was disappointed that Spock didn’t feel that their friendship was as meaningful to him as it did to Kirk, which is sort of what we’re saying,” Abrams said. “And that Spock’s arc is coming to unabashedly love his friend Kirk.”

“At the end of the day, while I agree with Damon Lindelof that withholding the Khan thing ended up seeming like we were lying to people, I was trying to preserve the fun for the audience, and not just tell them something that the characters don’t learn for 45 minutes into the movie, so the audience wouldn’t be so ahead of it.”

“I felt like, in a weird way, it was a little bit of a collection of scenes that were written by my friends — brilliantly talented writers — who I somehow misled in trying to do certain things. And yet, I found myself frustrated by my choices, and unable to hang my hat on an undeniable thread of the main story,” Abrams said. “So then I found myself on that movie basically tap-dancing as well as I could to try and make the sequences as entertaining as possible. Thank god I had the cast that we have, who are so unbelievably fun to watch. And an incredible new villain in Benedict Cumberbatch.”

“I would never say that I don’t think that the movie ended up working,” Abrams said. “But I feel like it didn’t work as well as it could have had I made some better decisions before we started shooting.”

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Clik here to view.The Movie: Duh

Aka: OMG SO GOOD

Aka 2: No, seriously, it’s great

Aka 3: The Search for Luke

“Working with John Williams was the chance to work with an absolute idol,” Abrams said. “And maybe the greatest film composer in the history of cinema. That was something that was as exciting as any other aspect of doing this film.”

“The burden that is on the shoulders of the younger actors in this movie is enormous: They’re stepping into a world and a spotlight, and need to shoulder not just the story in this film, but the story of what is the beginning of a new trilogy,” Abrams said.

He said he thought about the brilliance in the casting of the Harry Potter movies as he began the process. “Oh my god — they cast these kids, and you look at how young they are, and you realize they just remain those characters for I think what was, like, 37 movies. They grew up — and it is a massive leap of faith,” Abrams said. “Bringing them to life was a huge opportunity, but also an enormous risk and burden. Are we casting the right person? What happens if Hermione is wrong, or what happens if Ron isn’t quite right?”

 “So we needed to bring actors in who people could very quickly connect with, relate to, and sort of fall in love with.”

We wrote these characters trying best as we could to tell a story that we would hope people would embrace,” Abrams continued. “As the story we tell is hugely important, it’s also incredibly important that people see themselves in those stories. It was something that definitely was on my mind. It’s 2016 almost — it feels like what you need to do, what I’m compelled to do. It feels right.”

“I want people to feel that this is an inclusive world,” he said. “Because that’s what I felt when I saw Star Wars originally. The Force binds all living things together —not just white dudes.”

We’re just making a movie,” he said. “And the noise in the case of Force Awakens, expectations for it being the best Star Wars movie ever, or it’s going to make $600 million in the first weekend — all those things are wonderful that people care enough to want to see it. And also soul-crushing.”

Source: Buzzfeed

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It’s Star Trek‘s 50th anniversary, yet Star Trek Beyond (due 7/22) has mostly flown under the radar this year. At long last, though, here’s the second trailer. Let’s watch and discuss.

So the plot is….

Sad Kirk has been beaten down by the vastness of space, and Spock has somehow lost himself to it (I guess). Bones gives Kirk a “get back up on that horse, partner” pep talk. The Enterprise is then immediately attacked, boarded and destroyed by the latest notable actor to be hidden under prosthetics and make-up in a sci-fi movie (this time it’s Idris Elba). This baddie has a beef with the Federation, and holds most of the Enterprise survivors hostage (sorry, Sulu and Uhura). Luckily, Kirk and pals partner with pale-Furiosa (Kingsman‘s Sofia Boutella), and stage a rescue attempt. Eventually, they end up back on Earth (I think) and perform some nifty aerial dives. Along the way, Kirk questions his own motivations and loyalty to the Federation, and Bones and Spock bicker over the logic of fearing death. Those two – such cut-ups.

This is not the trailer you should really look to for plot. Just like Beyond‘s first trailer it’s sticking to the belief that this film’s best marketing hook is “Holy crap! We blew up the Enterprise!”

The actual plot, as per Simon Pegg’s EW interview, will see the crew two years into their-five-year mission and starting to feel a bit beaten down. As they lick their wounds during a diplomatic stop at a Federation outpost, they’re ambushed by Idris Elba’s Krall, leaving everyone scrambling to figure out who exactly this mysterious alien is and whether or not he’s actually wrong for hating the Federation. As Pegg said, “We’re gathering a great community within the galaxy, but to what end? What does it all mean?”

After the illegal, black ops actions of the Federation’s own high-ranking RoboCop (Peter Weller) last movie, there’s certainly reason to question this glorified outerspace UN. Maybe Star Trek Beyond will be the moment the Enterprise crew realizes what the United States has been forced to wake up to over the past decade: Not everyone actually wants your help. To the rest of the world, you are not automatically the hero of the story.

How many trailers can you recall using footage from an earlier film in the franchise?

I’m not talking teasers or any of those early “Remember this thing you liked? Well, we made another one!” promotional materials. I’m talking full-blown “This is what our new movie is about” trailers. Off the top of my head, I can’t recall a single such trailer which actually does what this Star Trek Beyond trailer does, which is to actually devote valuable real estate to footage from an earlier movie we’ve already seen before.

Just in case you forgot, this moment from the Star Trek Beyond trailer…

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Clik here to view. ….is actually from the 2009 Star Trek (seen at the 1 minute market of that movie’s trailer).

This brief callback isn’t really that big of a deal or something necessarily worth complaining about, but it might be a boon to the more conspiracy-minded among us. Everything about Paramount’s handling of Star Trek Beyond thus far has felt off, or at the very least very against the grain. Whereas the rest of the summer blockbusters are coming at us with their best pick-up lines every couple of weeks Star Trek Beyond is playing it coy from the other side of the bar. Is that a strategic choice, or birthed by necessity considering Star Trek Beyond’s rushed production (as I discussed last year)? Similarly, is them taking a moment to remind us of Kirk’s daddy issues from the 2009 movie a creative choice, or a “Shit, we don’t have enough finished footage from the new movie yet” compromise?

It certainly could be both. It does tie into this film’s apparent “And everything finally comes full circle” approach.

Pew pew pew. Boom boom boom.

Ultimately, this new trailer looks like it’s selling us a fairly generic action movie. New-to-the-franchise director Justin Lin is more than just the guy who made Fast & Furious movies, and Simon Pegg has previously expressed little patience for those who assume Lin was simply hired to churn out propulsive, delicious over-the-top action scenes. Pegg would know better than us. He did co-wrote Beyond‘ script, and he’s probably seen way more of the finished footage than us. However, as far as Paramount’s marketing department (or, more accurately, whichever company they hired to make these first two Beyond trailers) is concerned this is the biggest action movie in Star Trek history.

Does that have to be a bad thing? Not necessarily. You can do the standard Star Trek ethical debates while our characters are all running around instead of simply standing still on the Enterprise, and if this movie is to more or less begin with a huge action sequence it wouldn’t be the first time for the franchise (e.g., First Contact drops us right into the final battle in the war against Borg, with the Enterprise anchoring Earth’s last line of defense).

What will Star Trek Beyond have to offer us beyond all the loud things going boom? I dunno. Maybe a lot. Maybe nothing. Spock and Uhura will kiss at some point. So, that’s nice.

Star Trek Beyond opens July 22nd. Are you still struggling to seek up any real emotion for this movie? Or are you tired of all this film snobbery which fails to appreciate how cool the action scenes look in this trailer? Let me know in the comments.

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UPDATED: For follow-up articles, head here for Star Trek Beyond‘s Week 3 numbers and here for the Week 5 numbers.

Star Trek 4 is officially a go, and Chris Hemsworth’s returning as Captain Kirk’s dad, exactly how remains a mystery though (Time travel? Suspended animation? Artificial intelligence? Cloning?).

Or so Paramount says. This is the kind of box office-boosting announcement studios like to make right before a movie comes out. It’s their way of telling the market, “We believe in this movie so much we’re already working on a sequel.” However, if the movie underperforms you can go back to the studio a couple of months later to ask about that sequel and you’ll mostly get, “What sequel? What are you talking about? We never promised you a sequel.”

So, how much does Star Trek Beyond need to gross to prevent Paramount from wiggling out of their promise?

Short Answer: About as much as Star Trek Into Darkness.

Long Answer: With its $59.2m debut, Beyond came in on the extreme high end of the pre-release tracking. However, that’s actually a franchise low for this current iteration of the Enterprise crew. J.J. Abram’s 2009 Star Trek is still the higher water mark with $75.2m, and 2013’s much-derided Star Trek Into Darkness managed $70.2m.

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Into Darkness’ secret war ship meets the Enterprise.

Hold on. $75.2m in 2009. $70.2m in 2013. $59.2m in 2016. Hey, aren’t those numbers supposed to be going up, not down? The same goes for each film’s total domestic gross – $257m for Star Trek, $228m for Into Darkness and who knows how much for Beyond.

Yeah, that’s not great, but it’s only half the story. The numbers are going the right direction when you look at worldwide gross – $385m for Star Trek, $467m for Into Darkness and question mark for Beyond. And, wouldn’t you know it, Beyond opened in 46% of the global marketplace this weekend, grossing a respectable, if uneven $30m.

Still, Beyond carries a $185m production budget, and while it topped the much-lamented openings of Ghostbusters ($46m) and Legend of Tarzan ($46.5m) it didn’t post the type of eye-popping, Marvel-like opening weekend numbers you expect from something with a $185m price tag.

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Clik here to view.Where does Beyond go from here? If its legs are equal to the 2009 Star Trek ($257m off of a $75m opening for a 3.4x) it will end up with $202.6m. If, on the other hand, its legs are more on par with Into Darkness ($228m off of a $70m opening for a 3.26x) it’s looking at a final gross of $194.2m.

Those comparisons might not even hold because both of those came out in early May whereas Beyond is hitting us in late July. The last major sci-fi tentpoles to come out in July have been Ant-Man (really more superhero than sci-fi, though), Pacific Rim and Cowboys & Aliens. The latter two posted sub-$40m openings and barely made it to $100m total whereas Ant-Man followed a relatively modest $55m opening to $180m total, a 3.1x which many considered to be an impressively leggy run. If Beyond follows that example it’s looking at a final gross of $184.7m. If you widen the net a little further, there’s also Guardians of the Galaxy, which came out the first week of August and turned heads with its amazing 3.5x ($333m total off of a $94m opening). That same level of word of mouth would give Beyond $208.6m.

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Obviously, neither Ant-Man nor Guardians makes for a perfect comparison. Marvel movies are in a category by themselves.

So, $184m on the extreme low end and $208m on the absolute high, which would still be well below Into Darkness and the ’09 Trek. On the plus side, Beyond could receive an unexpected boost from those reveling in the franchise’s 50th anniversary ala what happened with Skyfall. However, there Sony and MGM carefully orchestrated a year-long celebration whereas here Paramount is so caught up in the Summer Redstone-Viacom soap opera you’d barely notice their premiere franchise is enjoying a pretty significant anniversary. Everyone at Paramount’s a bit preoccupied wondering if their corporate parent Viacom is going to sell the studio to some Chinese company or maybe even LionsGate.

Based on all of those domestic projections, Beyond’s salvation will have to come overseas. It will likely need to beat Into Darkness internationally (a franchise record of $238m) by a more than a little just to make up for the domestic shortfall.

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They should have had her say, “I’m the Captain now,” just like Barkhad Abdi in Captain Phillips

How much does Beyond need to make overall to lock in Star Trek 4?

As I discussed earlier this week, the rule of thumb is a movie can be considered to have broken even once it doubles its production budget in worldwide gross. In a recent analysis of the full financials for 29 recent blockbusters with a minimum budget of $100 StephenFollows.com discovered this rule of thumb is only accurate 83% of the time. Assuming Beyond falls into that 83% category, Paramount needs this thing to hit $370m worldwide before they can even start seriously thinking sequel. As a point of comparison, Into Darkness carried a $190m price tag thus giving it a break even point of $380m, and it ultimately ended up with $467m, which Paramount clearly saw as enough profit to warrant a sequel.

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Everyone wants him back, right? Right?

Logically, if Beyond ends up somewhere around $457m worldwide it would improve upon its break even point as much as Into Darkness did and turn Star Trek 4 from announcement to reality. However, Paramount desperately wants and needs Star Trek to be a mega-franchise, to the point that they hired Fast & Furious vet Justin Lin to helm Beyond and help them get over the hump. Critically speaking, he appears to have delivered a far better film than anyone expected (although I wasn’t overly impressed), which could help Beyond have serious legs after its opening even as it contends with Jason Bourne and Suicide Squad as well as holdover Ghostbusters business. Lin’s efforts alone might not be enough to help Trek turn that box office corner, though, and even if Paramount sees the same level of profit as they did on Into Darkness they wouldn’t be happy about it. Anything less than $500m worldwide would probably be a disappointment, a sign of a franchise treading water as opposed to growing

But, honestly, what the hell else does Paramount have at this point? They lost their animated franchises when DreamWorks jumped ship to Fox (and now to Universal). Their recent attempts to revive the Jack Ryan and Terminator franchises ended in epic failure. They still have no idea what to do with Friday the 13th. The Paranormal Activity, G.I. Joe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchises appear to have all sputtered out. All they really have is Star Trek, Transformers, Mission Impossible and maybe Jack Reacher. Next year, they’ll try to revive Baywatch and xXx and launch Ghost in the Shell.

Even if Beyond fails to make a quantum leap forward in blockbuster gross a moderately successful run should be enough to guarantee Star Trek 4 because at least Paramount will have that to fall back on amidst so much failure, franchise uncertainty and behind the scenes turmoil. Plus, as Forbes argued, there’s no reason other than perhaps actor salaries that Paramount couldn’t chart a more profitable path forward for the franchise with lower-cost sequels.

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Star Trek Beyond‘s weekend box office estimates are in, and it’s a real good news, bad news situation. In this summer of sequelitis, Beyond‘s performance is being greeted as perfectly adequate, but when judged according to its budget and franchise history it’s a clear disappointment.

Let’s do the numbers:

• * From 37 territories
• ** From 13 territories
• *** From 51 territories

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Clik here to view.The good news? Beyond took the weekend box office crown, knocking The Secret Life of Pets off of its perch. Moreover, that $59.6m is the third highest debut for any live-action movie this summer, trailing Civil War ($179m) and Apocalypse ($65.7m). It’s also on the extreme high end of the $55m-$60m pre-release projection.

The bad news? This marks a 15% decline from Into Darkness‘ domestic debut and a new low for the revived franchise. Paramount now needs Beyond to reach its peak potential internationally just to break even.

The good news? Beyond logged franchise highs in 17 markets, and scored first place debuts in roughly half (16) of the markets it played in. According to Deadline, it opened comfortably above Star Trek in Germany and light years above both Trek and Into Darkness in Russia, Taiwan and Thailand.

The bad news? It also opened below Into Darkness in Germany and below both Trek and Into Darkness in the UK and Australia. According to Variety, Beyond’s total international debut is 14% below what Into Darkness did in the same geographic spread.

The good news? China awaits with an excellent release date (9/2) up against no competition from another Hollywood title.

The bad news? China is currently suffering through its first prolonged box office slump in years.

The good news? Paramount partnered with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba on Beyond. As per Variety, “Alibaba will help cover the merchandising and promotional costs, and is also serving as a brand ambassador of sorts to the Middle Kingdom. The association worked well for Paramount in the case Rogue Nation, which grossed $135.7 million in China, an impressive 25% jump on the previous film in the franchise.”

Let’s make some guesses for where Beyond’s box office totals might end up

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Clik here to view.“Yes, we know the domestic marketplace is tough, but we did at the hot end of what anyone was forecasting. Justin Lin delivered,” is how Paramount Vice Chairman Rob Moore chose to characterize Beyond‘s domestic opening. He might as well have said, “Look, Ghostbusters, Independence Day and Tarzan would have all killed to have a debut this big! It’s not Justin Lin’s fault that everyone suddenly decided this was the summer to hate on Hollywood’s live-action blockbusters. Can’t you lemmings quit playing Pokemon GO long enough to see a movie! I got five kids to feed!”

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And, yes, that was just a Total Recall reference.

But it’s difficult to spin what is so obvious to the naked eye: the domestic numbers for these new Star Trek movies are going in the wrong direction. Paramount’s hope is for Beyond to continue the franchise’s international growth, but as of right now Beyond‘s  totals project out to:

That’s if Beyond “pulls the same domestic multiplier as the last two films (and Ant-Man),” but continues to trail Into Darkness internationally.

Let’s throw out some theories for the fall-off between Into Darkness and Beyond

1. The Into Darkness backlash still lingers

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Clik here to view.Into Darkness set franchise highs internationally and worldwide, and could be seen as a bottom-line success, albeit one which didn’t quite catapult the film series into an ultra high-end tax bracket. Still, there was enough there to warrant a sequel.

Yet the hardcore fans seemed to hate it. Remember, Trekkies voted Into Darkness the worst Star Trek film of all time, an argument perhaps not supported by a more level-headed assessment of the franchise’s true low points (looking at you, Nemesis and Final Frontier). That vote took place in the months after Into Darkness release, and the hatred expressed toward the film still lingers on today.

Beyond, by all appearances another bang-bang, whiz-whiz action-heavy Star Trek movie [read my review], gave those fans no reason to come back, especially when the final trailer was less about the movie and more about cross-promoting a new Rihanna song.

2. Yet those who loved or liked Into Darkness also went ignored

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Clik here to view.Opening weekend audiences graded Into Darkness as an “A” on CinemaScore, and it currently has a 7.8 out of 10 from nearly 400,000 IMDB user ratings. That’s the second highest rating on the site for any Star Trek movie, behind only the ’09 Star Trek (8.0). Point being, not everyone hated Into Darkness.

How does Beyond reward those fans? By completely ignoring them. They waited three years to see how things turned out between Kirk and Alice Eve’s version of Carol Marcus, especially since the Federation appeared to be on the verge of war with the Klingons, and they’ll have to keep on waiting because Beyond pretends Into Darkness never happened. Carol, who joined the crew at the end of Into Darkness, is neither seen nor referenced in Beyond. Same goes for the Klingons. Of course, to know that you have to actually see the movie, but you could guess as much from the trailers.

Perhaps Paramount was in a lose-lose situation. Left to honor those who embraced Into Darkness while also appeasing those who rejected it, they attempted a course correction, returning to a more episodic format while also upping the action. The result is a movie which scored a decent A- from CinemaScore, and a respectable 84% on RottenTomatoes, yet here we are discussing its lackluster box office.

3. The gap between the core audience and the studio is growing wider

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Clik here to view.Does “This is not your father’s Star Trek” ring a bell? That was part of the ad campaign for the 2009 Star Trek, and as BoxOfficeMojo argued at the time:

While accurate in its description of the movie itself for better or for worse, this line was not only puerile but unnecessarily insulting to the previous Star Trek incarnations and the audience base. One doesn’t have to alienate the fans in order to broaden the appeal (even if most will take the abuse and still see the new movie anyway). The Batman and James Bond franchises were successfully rebooted without openly attacking what came before (and Batman had more to apologize for after Batman Forever and Batman and Robin).

That set the tone for the oddly contentious approach Paramount has taken to Trekkies with all of these films, continually taking for granted that those bunch of nerds would automatically show up no matter what. However, it’s a strange feeling to be a fan of a film or television franchise which appears to no longer care about you. J.J. Abrams managed, as an outsider to the Star Trek phenomenon, to pull the franchise from the clutches of the Trekkies and deliver it in an easier to swallow form for the masses. Many admired his ability to make the once byzantine seem accessible. However, there has been a growing chant of “But what about us?” from longtime Trekkies who no longer recognize the Trek they loved in Abrams’ version.

That’s not to say disgruntled fans should always be catered to [insert obligatory reference to Ghostbusters controversy]. That’s also not to say JJ’s approach to the ’09 Star Trek was wrong. In fact, I know people who have only come to the franchise through his movies, and those same Trekkies who voted Into Darkness the worst in franchise history also voted the ’09 Star Trek as the franchise’s sixth best.

However, battle lines have been drawn from the beginning, and when Paramount selected Justin Lin to helm Beyond it seemed remarkably transparent that now Star Trek was going to be turned into a Fast & Furious riff, which is exactly what Lin ended up doing (so much action, so much rhetoric about the power of family). For many, though, what they still don’t see is their version of Star Trek, and now that Bryan Fuller is back in the fold, promising a new TV series (Star Trek: Discovery) which will return the franchise to its core (and be set in the old timeline) what use do certain fans have for the movies anymore?

4. The George Takei controversy furthered the Trekkie/Paramount divide

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Clik here to view.So, you have a group of disenfranchised fans who see nothing from the Beyond trailers which indicate it will be substantially different from Star Trek and Into Darkness. There are continued stories from the convention circuit about older Trek actors feeling disrespected by the way they’ve been ignored by J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot production company, which is still in charge of the films even if Abrams no longer directs them. And what should happen to come out in the weeks before Beyond’s release? That Simon Pegg and Justin Lin, determined to up Trek’s inclusiveness by revealing Sulu is gay, outright and knowingly ignored George Takei’s wishes.

You don’t actually have to agree with Takei on this, specifically that Sulu shouldn’t be gay because that’s not how Gene Roddenberry envisioned the character. I side more with Pegg and Lin. However, look at how Takei’s argument might resonate with those with an already negative opinion of the Abrams movies, specifically their treatment of the franchise’s legacy actors (other than Leonard Nimoy) and apparent disregard for Roddenberry’s original vision (from THR):

“I said, ‘This movie is going to be coming out on the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, the 50th anniversary of paying tribute to Gene Roddenberry, the man whose vision it was carried us through half a century. Honor him and create a new character. I urged them. He left me feeling that that was going to happen,” Takei says.

After that, all was quiet from Beyond until a few months ago, when Takei received an email from Pegg “praising me for my advocacy for the LGBT movement and for my pride in Star Trek,” he says. “And I thought to myself, ‘How wonderful! It’s a fan letter from Simon Pegg. Justin had talked to him!'” Takei was certain the creative team had rethought their decision to make Sulu gay.

That is until one month ago, when he received an email from Cho informing him that the actor was about to embark on an international media tour for Beyond. Cho said it was bound to come out that his character was gay, and “what should he do?” A disappointed Takei told Cho to go about his promotional duties, but that he was “not going to change” his mind on the matter.

“I really tried to work with these people when at long last the issue of gay equality was going to be addressed,” Takei says. “I thought after that conversation with Justin that was going to happen. Months later, when I got that email from Simon Pegg, I was kind of confused. He thinks I’m a great guy? Wonderful. But what was the point of that letter? I interpreted that as my words having been heard.”

They reached out to a legacy actor (a very social media savvy one at that), and when they didn’t like what he had to say they ignored him. Or, more accurately, there was a clear communication breakdown. Still, not the best argument to be playing out in the press in the weeks leading up to the new movie.

5. Paramount consistently dropped the ball with their promotion

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Clik here to view.Everything about Paramount’s promotion of Star Trek Beyond felt off. Whereas the rest of the summer blockbusters came at us with their best pick-up lines every other minute Star Trek Beyond played it coy from the other side of the bar until last call. They’d like us to believe this was a strategic choice, that offering up one ultra-short teaser in December before going on media silence until dropping the second trailer in May was meant as an antidote to what every other summer blockbuster was doing. However, it’s just as likely the result of Beyond’s remarkably rushed production schedule (as I discussed last year).

To briefly recap, Paramount had a completely different script and director, and when both of those fell apart they were left scrambling in ways unique to a production of this size. As Justin Lin told Deadline, when Abrams offered him the chance to direct he hesitated. “I knew that this was going to be a logistical nightmare. This film went from a new idea to production in six months. That’s never really been done before on a film of this scale.”

He went into even more detail for BirthMoviesDeath, “As the script was being written, I had to prepare to shoot in three and a half months, which is something unusual. For us to be able to have a crew of hundreds of people waiting for directions, while we also had to write the script, was extremely challenging.”

And maybe Paramount’s marketing department was equally challenged to find finished footage they could actually use in trailers and TV spots, which might be why Beyond‘s final trailer arrived literally a week before its release date. That trailer ultimately gave away too much of the plot, but at least it realized there was a plot. Prior to that point, most people still had no idea what this movie was even about.

The way Paramount went about all of this set off multiple warning flags, worrying those who were actually paying attention and completely losing those who have become accustomed to constant reminders of a film’s impending release.

As Deadline explained:

If a studio is going to expand the fanbase of a franchise, it’s never too early to get the word out. Paramount skipped Comic-Con last year with any type of major tubthumping for Star Trek Beyond. [It] also didn’t help Paramount in the distribution/exhibition community when they opted out of showing any footage from Star Trek Beyond at Cinema-Con. That move prompted some gossip among rival distribution chiefs, who suspected something was wrong with the film and buzzed about the pic’s production delay.

Paramount claims it had a plan: In May, the studio threw a fan event on the Melrose lot, and showed off a new trailer and exclusive footage. Even though that was two months out, shouldn’t they have hosted the event six months sooner during the 50th anniversary year of the franchise? Disney just threw its Star Wars Celebration in London with a big spotlight on its prequel Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and that doesn’t come out until December.

Paramount also chose an outdoor IMAX theater at San Diego Comic-Con to be the site of Beyond‘s world premiere, a first of its kind event and a lovely gesture toward the fans. Social media was immediately lit up with reactions from those lucky enough to be in attendance. However, Comic-Con attracts 130,000 people every year. How many of them were able to attend the Beyond premiere? And of those who weren’t how many actually found the time in their obviously busy weekend at Comic-Con to head out to see Beyond in a theater?

Other variables to consider include the current heat wave punishing Europe and suppressing ticket sales, the general down market for live-action blockbusters in North America right now and the late-July release date versus the prior two Star Trek movies having May release dates.

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There’s a new Star Trek movie in theaters right now.

Cool. Let’s rank it.

Hold on there buddy. Why can’t we stop and appreciate it, remember the good times (those Spock/McCoy scenes), lament the bad times (those Krall scenes….pretty much all of them)? Be grateful for what we got. Chew on it a little longer. Why must we rank it in comparison to the franchise catalog to this point?

Because, to echo Harley Quinn in the Suicide Squad trailer, it’s what we do. After all, thousands of Trekkies voted on all of the films three years after Into Darkness was finishing its theatrical run, and we all remember how that turned out, don’t we? Turns out the hardcore fans really, really hate Into Darkness.

Those same fans are meeting against next weekend for the annual Official Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas. I wonder what they think of Star Trek Beyond. I’ve heard some refer to it as being on par with Insurrection [wait – that was me], others have listed it as the second or third best Trek film of all time, without hesitation. Either way, here’s my updated ranking of Star Trek films, with my rankings of Generations and Insurrection possibly reflecting the fact that I grew up with the Next Generation cast (although that doesn’t blind me to Nemesis’ faults):

Here’s the full list: 

1. ‘Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan’
2. ‘Star Trek: First Contact’
3. ‘Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home’
4. ‘Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country’
5. ‘Star Trek’
6. ‘Star Trek: Generations’
7. ‘Star Trek Beyond’
8. ‘Star Trek: Insurrection’
9. ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’
10. ‘Star Trek III: The Search For Spock’‘
11. ‘Star Trek: The Motion Picture’
12. ‘Star Trek: Nemesis’
13. ‘Star Trek: The Final Frontier’

What does your list look like right now, even if you haven’t seen Beyond yet?

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UPDATED 8-22-16: For a follow-up article, here for Star Trek Beyond‘s Week 5 numbers.

In the days leading up to the release of Star Trek Beyond, Paramount announced a sequel was already in development, and I wrote an article asking exactly how much Beyond would need to gross to actually turn that promised sequel into a reality. After all, announcing a sequel in the days before a new movie comes out is usually just theater attendance-boosting showmanship, easily walked back if the audience doesn’t actually show up in sufficient numbers. Many a sequel script has been started and then never finished or at least finished but never filmed in situations like this. So, for Star Trek 4 to avoid that fate and instead turn into an actual slamdunk we-made-enough-profit-to-justify-another-movie decision Beyond probably needs to hit somewhere in the $400m-$450m range worldwide. That is, of course, unless Paramount is willing to make another Star Trek despite taking a loss on its most recent one.

Well, it’s three weeks later. Where do we stand on those chances for Star Trek 4 now?

Short answer: Um, ask again in a month.

Long answer: It’s not looking too hot right now, and that’s mostly because Beyond has been wiped out by Jason Bourne and Suicide Squad domestically and hasn’t hit several key foreign markets yet.

STAR TREK BEYOND WORLDWIDE AS OF 8/9/16 – AFTER 3 WEEKENDS OF RELEASE

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Will we get to see Jaylah post-Starfleet training? Might she someday get her own captain’s chair?

At the box office, it’s been a real shitshow all summer for live-action blockbusters, with the industry facing a  rather stark and very concerning audience erosion, particularly as it relates to sequels/reboots/revivals. July, in particular, saw disappointing returns for Legend of Tarzan, Ghostbusters and Beyond. Jason Bourne isn’t quite performing up to franchise standards, but Universal kept the budget low enough ($120m) for a so-so performance to be considered a win. Paramount and its $185m budget for Beyond clearly didn’t get the memo.

As such, Beyond‘s domestic performance ($128m after 3 weekends off of a $59m opening) is pretty much par for the course this summer, where all of the box office results would maybe look just a little better if the involved films hadn’t cost so dang much to make. But the most startling development is the way Beyond is tanking in comparison to the prior J.J. Abrams Star Trek films, with Abrams still attached to Beyond as a producer despite yielding the director’s chair to Justin Lin.  Star Trek and Into Darkness each posted $200m+ domestic totals in the end, and were in the $180m area after 3 weekends. Star Trek did that through especially fantastic word of mouth. Beyond...well, not so much.

You might be looking at that and thinking, “But I saw Beyond. It’s really pretty good despite its weak villain. It’s at least one of the more competent blockbusters this summer. What gives?” Jason Bourne and Suicide Squad, that’s what. Welcome to the new normal. Bourne ate away Beyond‘s second-week audience, and then Suicide Squad did the same to Bourne. That’s a level of direct competition neither Into Darkness nor Star Trek had to contend with. As Forbes argued, this might just be the new normal:

But we’ve now seen three straight weekends where a big movie snagged a peak potential opening and got hammered the next weekend due to another giant tentpole opening in the fray. This may be the future of the industry if Hollywood insists on drowning us in would-be franchise tentpoles.

This might also be a reflection of these Abrams movies gradually losing an audience, with Star Trek being the peak ($257m domestic), Into Darkness ($228m) the downslide and Beyond the bottom. Of course, while Into Darkness ultimately came up short of Star Trek‘s domestic total it made up for it with a big international showing which helped it take the title of biggest worldwide hit ($467m) in Star Trek history. So, how’s Beyond doing in that department?

INTERNATIONAL

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Clik here to view.Pretty much the same story as domestic. Here’s a breakdown of Beyond’s performance after 3 weekends in the 6 biggest markets for film it is currently playing in compared to the prior Abrams films’ 3 weekend-totals in the same territories:

Two Notes: “Neth.” is short for Netherlands, and Germany’s totals are only through week 2 because week 3 estimates weren’t available at the time I put this together

With all due respect to Italy and Netherlands, the 11th and 15th biggest international film markets in the world, Paramount probably isn’t exactly ecstatic that Beyond is at least keeping up with Into Darkness and Star Trek in those territories. Instead, they have to be disappointed with the way Beyond is lagging considerably behind Into Darkness‘ pace in the UK, Germany, Australia and Russia.

This is what Beyond is projected to finish with in those territories compared to Into Darkness and Star Trek‘s actual totals:

A Couple Notes: Remember these are just the projected final totals for Beyond based on its performance through 3 weekends. Also remember that the ’09 Star Trek was not actually a big international hit, finishing with just $127m in foreign box office. Lastly, I couldn’t fit it on the chart, but if you’re curious Beyond‘s projected domestic total right now is a mere $146m, that is if it keeps falling the way it has thus far.

The story, as per usual, now turns to China. Beyond has openings over the next couple of weeks in France, South Korea, Spain, Brazil and Mexico, all of them top 15 markets for film. However, both Into Darkness and Star Trek made less than $10m in each of those countries, except for South Korea where Into Darkness grossed $11.4m. The real boost for Into Darkness, though, came from China, where it scored $56m compared to Star Trek‘s meager $8m. As such, Paramount partnered with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba on Beyond, and secured a fantastic release date (9/2) up against no competition from another Hollywood title.

Furthermore, as per Variety, “Alibaba will help cover the merchandising and promotional costs, and is also serving as a brand ambassador of sorts to the Middle Kingdom. The association worked well for Paramount in the case Rogue Nation, which grossed $135.7 million in China, an impressive 25% jump on the previous film in the franchise.”

Based on what Beyond is doing in the rest of the world, it’s going to need a boost just like that. After China, there’s just Japan (10/21), and then Paramount will be left figuring out their next move. As Forbes said, “Paramount need to come to a place where a $150m domestic/$300m worldwide total for a Star Trek movie is considered a win” because that’s roughly where Beyond seems to be heading unless it’s saved by China.

In this, the 50 year anniversary of the franchise, it is worth pausing to point out that if you just go by box office receipts alone several of the prior Star Trek movies would look like money losers, specifically Nemesis, Insurrection and The Final Frontier, and two of those three still earned sequels. Plus, there’s no telling what kind of shot in the arm the franchise will receive from the forthcoming Star Trek: Discovery TV series, which will be unrelated to the current films and managed by a different company (CBS instead of Paramount, although they are oddly both owned by Viacom) but is still Star Trek. Having an actual new Trek TV show up and running, available through Netflix pretty much everywhere in the world but the US, could at least keep the franchise in the public consciousness and embolden Paramount to crank out one more film, probably again co-financed with Alibaba. Or it could backfire and cause audiences to prefer to see a Star Trek: Discovery movie instead of Kirk and crew yet again.

Oh, such potential drama:

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Clik here to view.Sources: Forbes, BoxOfficeMojo

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Star Trek Beyond fell out of the top 10 at the domestic box office this weekend, doing so two weeks faster than Into Darkness and three weeks faster than Star Trek. I previously declared Beyond was pretty much toast until it’s early September release in China, and that there really was no need to pay close attention to the box office until then. However, with the film now out of the top 10 I thought now would be a good time for an update:

STAR TREK BEYOND WORLDWIDE AS OF 8/22/16 – AFTER 5 WEEKENDS OF RELEASE

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Turns out, setting a franchise low for opening weekend, and then following that up with franchise highs for second and third weekend declines is not a good combination. That’s essentially what Beyond did, though, trailing Star Trek and Into Darkness in all of the good box office categories and leading them in the bad ones. That’s how it is that after 31 days in theaters Beyond is more than $60m off the pace of Into Darkness and $75m behind Star Trek. Both of those movies eventually topped out in the $228m-$257m range. It’s entirely possible Beyond will barely make it to $160m. Ouch.

You can see in the chart below that after its second weekend Beyond has been declining roughly on par with Into Darkness, a couple of percentage points behind one weekend, nearly identical another weekend. However, when what you are declining from is a $70m opening for Into Darkness versus $59m for Beyond the gap grows wider pretty quickly. Also remember the 2009 Star Trek was declining from a $75m debut.

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Clik here to view.The bigger question here is why exactly this has happened, and the answers are still the same as they were when I wrote about them in more detail after Beyond‘s lackluster opening, chiefly that this has been a terrible summer for live-action sequels/reboots/revivals, hardcore fans are punishing Beyond for Into Darkness, Paramount’s marketing had the feel of a studio doing its best to cover for a rushed, troubled production and the publicity campaign was so late-arriving that it failed to build up pre-release awareness. Plus, they were dealing with a product which offered few obvious marketing hooks to play off of other than the destruction of the Enterprise, and newer fans might have been turned off by how this new film appeared to completely ignore Into Darkness.

Oh, also, freakin’ Jason Bourne and Suicide Squad came along and kicked Star Trek‘s ass in weeks 2 and 3.

INTERNATIONAL

And while Beyond has been clobbered by the competition at home Paramount has held the film back in several major international territories. This past week alone, it debuted in South Korea, France and Spain, and in the coming weeks it will finally hit Brazil, Japan and Mexico. According to the MPAA, those are all top 15 markets for film. However, they each contributed less than $10m to the international totals for both Into Darkness and Star Trek, except for South Korea where Into Darkness grossed $11.4m. As before, the real hopes lies in China where Into Darkness made 6 times Star Trek‘s Middle Kindgom total and thus led Paramount to partner with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba on Beyond.

China is still several weeks down the road, though, and the weekend totals for South Korea, France and Spain have yet to come in. For now, Beyond is stuck at under $90m in foreign gross, and after five weekends it is trailing well behind Into Darkness‘ pace in the five biggest international territories it’s playing in.

Remember, of course, Into Darkness’s international total ($238m) was a vast improvement over Star Trek‘s, which never quite caught on overseas (just $127m) the way it did at home ($258m). As such, you’ll see that Beyond is actually beating Star Trek in several countries, but that’s not really as impressive as it might seem since Star Trek was an astonishingly weak international performer.

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Clik here to view.According to the MPAA, the UK, Germany, Australia, Russia and Italy rank as the second, seventh, eighth, tenth and eleventh biggest international box office markets. So doing poorly in Italy doesn’t mean nearly as much to the bottom line as doing poorly in the UK.

Beyond‘s break-even target is thought to be near $400m worldwide, but it is going to need seriously peak performances in every remaining major market, especially China, to get there.

Small problem: China’s 5 year orgy of neverending box office growth has finally hit a wall. The country is currently mired in a box office slump which has everyone in Hollywood alarmed.

HOME VIDEO

A couple of days ago a reader of one of my prior Star Trek Beyond box office articles asked, “Why isn’t the fact [Beyond] will shift a stack of DVDs Blu-Ray and downloads, not to mention be on tv for the next 2 decades being taken into account. Also don’t forget product placement, you really think Chekov was a whiskey drinker?”

It’s a fair question, albeit one which possibly misunderstands just how much the home video market has shrunk in recent years (read this MarketWatch report for a fuller explanation of why movies are more and more dependent on box office revenue). However, it also gets at everything we’re probably never going to actually know for sure about Beyond or any other movie for that matter. As Stephen Galloway of The Hollywood Reporter explained earlier today:

As any studio chief can tell you, it’s profitability that counts. But it’s almost impossible to assess. Few studios ever give an accurate account of the negative cost of their films — that is, how much they cost to make, before prints and advertising are added to the mix. On the rare occasions they do, they stay mum about their marketing outlay.

Their lips are also tightly sealed when it comes to non-theatrical revenue — income that eclipses earnings from theaters, including home entertainment, network and cable TV, along with a host of other ancillary markets.

Without these numbers, nobody can know whether a movie is in the black or how profitable it truly is. Box office numbers may not be lies, but they obfuscate and distort the truth.

The true story on Beyond‘s financials are and will continue to only be known by Paramount, SkyDance, Bad Robot, Alibaba and the various moneymen and studio accountants behind the scenes. However, we can all look at the box office and do the simple math which tells us a movie which reportedly cost $185m to make shouldn’t be falling so far behind its franchise predecessors in just about every major market around the world.

It’s such a shame too because, Beasties Boy song and all, Beyond is one of the more competently made blockbusters of the summer. In my experience, it actually benefits from repeat viewing, but if you go by the box office it would seem as if very few are going back a second time, if indeed they ever went at all.

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Star Trek, in the Shatner years, was a hit franchise in the States. The Motion Picture, The Voyage Home, Wrath of Khan, and Search for Spock easily solid tickets on par with, in some cases superior to the J.J. Abrams movies. However, you need to be huge everywhere these days to make it, and after three separate attempts, Paramount is now waving the white flag on attempting to turn Star Trek into a blockbuster franchise that can hang with Marvel, Star Wars or Transformers worldwide. If there is to be a Star Trek 4, it has to have a smaller budget. Are they right?

Here’s a summary of the latest behind the scenes drama with the Star Trek film franchise:

Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth: how dare you ask us to take a pay cut to do Star Trek 4!

Paramount: look, you’re lucky we’re even making a Star Trek 4!

They want more money.

This comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which hears Hemsworth and Pine, who were to star as father and son in a time travel storyline, have both walked away from Star Trek 4 and accused Paramount of reneging on their existing deals. Hemsworth’s deal presumably goes back to when he cameoed as Kirk’s dead at the start of the 2009 Star Trek. Whether they’ll come back to the negotiating table or be recast remains to be seen. The rest of the cast, incidentally, also needs to renegotiate their deals but have been waiting for Pine and Hemsworth to set the rates.

This doesn’t mean the project is dead. “Paramount and Skydance insiders say the movie, also produced by J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, remains a priority development and is not being put on hold.”

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S. J. Clarkson (Jessica Jones, Succession) remains attached to make history as the first woman to direct a Star Trek movie.

However, while the film is a priority the marching orders are to slash the budget this time.

Why the studio wants to spend less money, not more.

The studio and the producers have tried spending blockbuster dollars to turn Star Trek into a blockbuster-grossing film franchise three different times. It hasn’t worked. This version of Star Trek is still a bigger player at the global box office than its Stewart and Shatner-led predecessors, but it still hasn’t turned the corner into Marvel-Star Wars territory where each movie grosses, at minimum, $700m. After three different tries, maybe it’s just not going to happen.

Into Darkness, the highest-grossing Star Trek movie ever, only netted $29m in profit, according to Deadline. The studio now contends it actually lost money on Beyond, which is certainly believable, even without having to use tricky Hollywood accounting. Beyond fails the simple box office rule, which is did it double its budget at the global box office? If not, it probably lost money.

With Jim Gianopulos entering his second year as Paramount CEO and currently increasing film profits by lowering operating expenses, there’s just no chance a Star Trek 4 is going to be made at the same budget level as the last two films. Truthfully, with that track record and a cast which now includes actors better recognized as Steve Trevor and Gamora, I’m surprised this movie is happening at all. Quentin Tarantino’s still-undefined involvement seems to have sweetened the pot for Paramount, but not so much so that another Marvel-sized budget is on the way.

I see why Pine and Hemsworth might feel wronged, especially if they did indeed already have deals in place with Paramount’s former leadership, the since-departed Brad Grey, who announced Star Trek 4 before Beyond even came out. Maybe those two have reached a point where they don’t really need Star Trek, although it’s funny to even say that since Hemsworth’s only ever been in it for that one scene.

Lower budgets might mean better movies.

But this is the only logical path forward for Star Trek as a film franchise.

As Forbes argued after Beyond’s disappointing box office debut in 2016:

The Star Trek franchise cannot carry the weight of top-tier blockbuster budgets. If it hasn’t broken out at this point, it’s probably not going to. That’s okay. There is plenty of money to be made from a mid-level franchise that still pulls in big bucks, think the Sherlock Holmes films for example. If Paramount and Skydance Productions [and Chinese investors] can manage to make a $120 million Star Trek film, one that has a bit less action and spectacle while losing little of the character development or sense of topical optimism, that would be a “yes win” scenario. Fans will be happier with a Star Trek franchise that doesn’t feel required to be a hard action movie, general audiences will get more of a series they seem to enjoy, and Paramount will be (presumably) thrilled at the idea of a theoretical $120 million Star Trek 4 coasting to $350m worldwide.

Now, in 2018 the TV arm is up and running again with Discovery and a Picard show on CBS All Access. The last Star Trek movie came out long ago enough – it’s only been 2 years, sure, but anything longer than that is a lifetime for most ongoing franchise these days – that general audiences have probably already assumed there’s not going to be another one.

It all could have gone differently. The films followed their one moment of maximum momentum – the post ‘09 high of so many new fans joining because of J.J. Abrams’ movie – into a 4-year wait before finally delivering the high-grossing, but deeply divisive Into Darkness. Not surprisingly, three years later the rather ho-hum Beyond played to significantly lower numbers, as new-to-the-franchise director Justin Lin failed to transfer some of his Fast & Furious box office cred to Star Trek. Beyond even took on several Chinese investors to boost its appeal to the Middle Kingdom, and the result was a meager $65m gross, barely better than Into Darkness’s $57m Chinese haul.

A tough sell for the cast.

The most fiscally prudent course of action is to slash the budget, cut back on all the action set-pieces and get back to more of a focus on character. Lower the cost, lower the profit hurdles. Simple. It’s all so obvious when looking at a spreadsheet or BoxOfficeMojo, but this also means asking actors who’ve been playing these characters for nearly a decade to take pay cuts. That’s a harder pill to swallow, especially when several of them now belong to one or two other franchises.

So, at the moment, Captain Kirk might be out (or recast, but let’s stick with “out”). You know what that means, right?

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Captain Sulu!

What do you think they – “they” being either Paramount or the cast or both – should do? And does this mean we’ll never see that dang Klingon-Federation war teased in Into Darkness?

Source: THR

The Rise of Skywalker – highly advertised by Disney as the end of the line for the saga of Anakin, Luke and Rey – is not a true ending to the story; it’s J.J. Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy’s version of one way Star Wars could have gone, knowingly constructed in defiance of the story suggestions George Lucas left behind on his way out the door. Watchmen is not the logical next step for Alan Moore’s vision; it’s Damon Lindelof’s best stab at updating the IP for today.

Welcome to the age of officially sanctioned fanfic.

Earlier this month, the new Ghostbusters trailer dropped and the internet had some thoughts, mostly that it was lame and looked like a Stranger Things rip-off. Never mind that Stranger Things is itself a fanfic remix of all nerdy 80s pop culture, including Ghostbusters. No, since the new Ghostbusters features one of the Stranger Things kids, Finn Wolfhard, and the trailer is mostly scenes of a couple of Midwestern kids discovering old Ghostbusters gear in their dead grandpa’s farm the fix is apparently in. You can’t take the kids out of the homage machine that is Stranger Things, put them into an 80s remake/requel/sequel, and call it good. The formula at play is too transparent, especially since this is coming from a franchise that recently tried to glom another trend – female-led projects – as justification for a rather troubled reboot.

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Well, shit, says anyone who worked on the new Ghostbusters. What the heck do people want? The trailer is a masterwork of misdirection and nostalgic showmanship, starting off by pretending this just might be a domestic drama about some big-city kids struggling to adjust to living in the sticks. Sure, that doesn’t explain why exactly Paul Rudd is around as an overenthusiastic scientist responding to some weird nearby seismic activity, but, hey, you go with it. Then the trailer shifts toward acknowledging that these kids are actually the grandchildren of one of the original Ghostbusters, not that they know or understand what that even means.

That’s ok. Those of us who already know the franchise are way ahead of them. Obviously, the ghost they end up hunting through the city is Slimer, and of course we recognize Bill Murray’s voice at the end, the trailer repurposing one of his speeches from the old films. To anyone unfamiliar with the franchise, though, maybe Finn Wolfhard will be enough to pull you into something new/something old.

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Yeah, try telling that to Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Millie Bobby Brown’s film debut and giant box office letdown.

That won’t stop Hollywood from trying again, though. This is an industry, after all, which has for ages acted according to a very simple formula: take that thing that seems to be working over there and try to bring it over here. In this case, take a Stranger Things kid and put them in something that feels like it is from the 80s and hope like hell that it works. It and It: Chapter 2 certainly rode that to the bank. Godzilla: King of the Monsters, not so much. Your turn, Ghostbusters.

It’s not just Stranger Things and 80s nostalgia, though. We see this all over the place. Look to earlier this year when Sony tried and failed to poach away two Marvel Cinematic Universe actors – Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson – and make them the buddy duo face of a rebooted Men in Black. Result: lowest-grossing film in franchise history, by far.

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This is just one of the Hollywood formulas that are currently struggling.

Another: passing off glorified fan-fiction as legitimate IP cultivation.

One of the byproducts of Hollywood’s slavish adherence to only funding projects based on old properties everyone at least kind of knows is that fanfic has gone mainstream. Of course, we don’t think of it that way nor is it usually put in those terms. When J.J. Abrams creates a new Star Wars movie, it’s, well, a new Star Wars Movie. Except it’s not. It’s J.J. Abrams Star Wars fanfiction. The same goes for Danny McBride and David Gordon Green’s Halloween from last year, Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen from this year, and the last couple of seasons of Game of Thrones aka the ones where they had to guess how the story’s supposed to end since they finally lapped George R.R. Martin’s novels. All of them boil down to being a very famous fan’s idea of what could have happened next in the story.

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But we don’t call it fanfic. That’s partly because the mere word “fanfic” still carries a stigma, a presumption of something being inherently lesser, the work of a passionate person with a hobby, not a professional with a worldwide stage. If “fanfic” is the work of an amateur not formally affiliated with the franchise they love so much, then by definition an Abrams Star Wars film or Lindelof Watchmen episode cannot be considered fanfic. No, these are canonical continuations of beloved franchises, the end result of literally millions in investments from corporate overlords and countless hours of manpower from both salaried and hourly employees.

Yet, on a recent episode of The Ringer’s The Watch podcast Lindelof referred to his work on Watchmen as fanfiction. In fact, he argued most of his peers are professional fanfic writers now, offering their best takes on beloved franchises since that’s the only thing Hollywood will put any money into. In almost of these cases, the original creators – George Lucas, Alan Moore, John Carpenter (who did at least consult and provide music to the new Halloween), Debra Hill – are dead, retired, have moved on, or…to be honest, I don’t really know Alan Moore is up to these days, but he’s certainly not in the business of authorizing anyone to turn Watchmen into an HBO series. He doesn’t have the legal right to forbid such things, but as a purveyor of the dark arts he can place a curse on anyone who goes there. So, yes, Damon Lindelof has literally been cursed by Alan Moore, but Watchmen the show still exists.

Lindelof’s approach, as he explained on the pod, is to make the most of the opportunity. If he gets to be the one to make glorified Watchmen fanfic, he owes it to himself to rise to the material and use it to challenge audiences the same way the graphic novel did in the 80s. Considering his past involvement in Prometheus and the first couple of J.J. Abrams Star Trek movies, this is far from his first rodeo, and he can’t help but inject his own storytelling habits into each piece of IP he touches. That’s why certain episodes of Watchmen feel like they could very well have come from his prior HBO show, The Leftovers, itself a reinterpretation and expansion of a novel. It’s the only know he knows how to do this, and if you’re not trying something new with IP then what’s the point of doing anything with it, or so he seems to believe.

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Rian Johnson would certainly agree with that. “I think approaching any creative process with that or anything with that second thing you said [making fandoms happy] would be a mistake that would lead to probably the exact opposite result,” Johnson said in an interview on the Swings & Mrs. podcast. “Even my experience as a fan, you know if I’m coming into something, even if it’s something that I think I want, if I see exactly what I think I want on the screen, it’s like ‘oh, okay,’ it might make me smile and make me feel neutral about the thing and I won’t really think about it afterwards, but that’s not really going to satisfy me…I want to be shocked, I want to be surprised, I want to be thrown off-guard, I want to have things recontextualized, I want to be challenged as a fan when I sit down in the theater.”

That’s not the J.J. Abrams way, though. His production company, Bad Robot, recently signed a megadeal with WarnerMedia after being courted by just about every studio in town. Heck, Abrams’ services were so coveted WB changed freakin’ CEOs at Bad Robot’s unofficial request. (The sexual misconduct charge against ousted WB CEO Kevin Tsujihara was too far beyond the pale for Abrams; if he was to even consider signing with WarnerMedia, Tsujihara had to go.)

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That’s true power, and it’s the kind of power Abrams possesses entirely because through both his film and producing projects he has proven himself the master at playing with other people’s toys and making everyone – both the initiated and uninitiated – feel invited to the party. (Star Trek purists aside, his Star Trek films set franchise records at the box office.) Unlike Johnson or Lindelof, Abrams doesn’t approach IP as something to be weaponized against an audience already overdosed on nostalgia; instead, he offers clever variations on the familiar.

Abrams’ fanfic is the type you read and then think, “Wow, this guy has clearly seen A New Hope a lot. Like, a lot a lot.” Johnson, however, produces fanfic that leaves you thinking, “He clearly knows his Star Wars, but he’s also mixing in a lot of Battlestar Galactica in there.”

Neither of them had anything to do with the creation of the first 6 Star Wars films. They are fans, pure and simple, with differing approaches to storytelling. It has left us with a schizophrenic new trilogy. They wrote dueling fan fiction novels parading as films, and when the internet didn’t know how to cope with the narrative whiplash Abrams and LucasFilms freaked and reportedly veered Rise of Skywalker right back toward Force Awakens-style fan service. Critics are unimpressed. I’m seeing it tonight. Lowered expectations?

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That’s why I’d be ok if HBO walked away from Watchmen. Lindelof has made it clear he is done with the show as an everyday showrunner/head writer; if there is to be a second season, his involvement will either be tangential or entirely ceremonial. He may categorize the show as his unsanctioned fanfic, a work literally cursed by Alan Moore, but if you’ve seen The Leftovers you know that Lindelof’s Watchmen deserves to be thought of as, well, Lindelof’s Watchmen. Structurally, thematically, visually – it is of a piece with his prior work, so much so that it’s hard to imagine this version of Watchmen going forward without him.

But that’s the thing about Hollywood’s fanfic era – there’s always another fan willing to take a stab at it. It was just 3 years ago that Paul Feig’s feminist fanfic Ghostbusters failed to turn a profit at the box office. Sony is back at it again, except this time Ivan Reitman (director of the first two films) and Dan Aykroyd (star and co-writer) are even more involved (they were around for the ’16 film but it wasn’t really their project) and Ivan’s son Jason is directing and co-writing. That’s right, they made sure to include some of the original authors (original co-screenwriter Harold Ramis, sadly, is no longer with us) and even a second-generation author. That should solve things, right?

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Oh, yeah – bringing back the original author doesn’t always works out either.