In a rather shocking bit of news from late last Friday, The Hollywood Reporter reported (sorry) that Paramount/Viacom Inc.’s Star Trek 4 (not the alleged Quintin Tarantino movie) is in grave peril.
Chris Pine (Captain Kirk) and Chris Hemsworth (Kirk’s late father in an apparent time-travel plot) walked away from the negotiating table.
Pine and Hemsworth want more money than Paramount is offering, and now the S.J. Clarkson-directed movie is in peril of ending up in the undiscovered country.
Long-story short, the two Chris’s want the money that was promised/negotiated when Brad Grey first announced Star Trek 4 just before Star Trek Beyond was released. Paramount, under new management, wants them to take a pay cut considering Star Trek Beyond’s underperformance. First, Chris and Chris need Star Trek more than Star Trek needs them. Second, this is a fine example of why you don’t formalize a sequel before the previous movie opens.
It’s no secret that I’ve argued that the biggest problem with Paramount and Bad Robot’s rebooted Star Trek franchise is its top-tier blockbuster budgets. The films cost about as much as a mid-level Walt Disney MCU movie, and yet they have never come close to the $700 million-to-$1 billion global cumes of those films, to save nothing of Universal/Comcast Corp.'s Fast and the Furious sequels, Paramount's Mission: Impossible sequels or Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc.'s much-debated DC Films flicks. Moreover, those blockbuster budgets and global aspirations require spectacle-filled action scenes, which detract from the character work and often annoy the hardcore fans.
This was a franchise whose biggest budget thus far was $70 million, and then in 2009 J.J. Abrams and friends spent $150m on a rebooted “young Kirk and Spock join the Federation and save the world” prequel. The good news is that Star Trek earned rave reviews and white-hot domestic box office, grossing $256m domestic from a $79m debut weekend. The bad news is that it only made $385m worldwide. That figure wasn’t far off from Batman Begins ($205m domestic/$371m worldwide in 2005), and the presumption was that the sequel would take a Dark Knight-level jump.
But Star Trek Into Darkness earned “just” $229 million domestic and $467m worldwide on a $190m budget in 2013.
That wasn’t a dreadful result, but some of that overseas boost came from a 3D conversion, and the Kirk versus Khan adventure was torn apart by the die-hard fans despite strong pre-release reviews and decent audience polling.
Cue Justin Lin’s Star Trek Beyond, which earned good reviews and fan approval, but made just $158m domestic and $345m worldwide on a $190m budget.
These films are never going to pull Guardians of the Galaxy-level numbers. Overseas audiences are no more entranced by Star Trek than they are by the newfangled Star Wars movies. And, quite frankly, if the appeal of the initial Star Trek reboot was a sci-fi actioner that felt like an old-school Star Wars movie, then that appeal was rendered null-and-void once The Force Awakens opened. So, yeah, Paramount is making the smart play to try to make a cheaper Star Trek movie. On a mere $120 million budget, Star Trek Beyond likely would have made money in the end.
But that Paramount is now stuck negotiating down from whatever was promised to Pine and Hemsworth prior to Star Trek Beyond is another example of why it’s rarely a good idea to announce a sequel before the predecessor opens. Paramount did just that the week of Star Trek Beyond’s release, and I (correctly) noted at the time that it was a bluff intended to increase interest and media coverage of the third “new” Star Trek flick. It was no more a certainty at that juncture than Fantastic Four 2, Green Lantern 2 or Terminator Genisys 2.
Had Paramount waited, they wouldn’t be in this situation.
Yes, had Star Trek Beyond topped $500 million worldwide, Pine and Hemsworth might have held out for even more money. But that’s arguably a better problem to have than one where the key star and a major added value element demand “Star Trek 3 is going to be a hit!” money even after Star Trek 3 turns out to be an underperformer.
As for which side should blink, that’s a tough one. While Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth are both “stars” in the sense that they are popular and media-friendly actors who headline major box office hits, they can’t open an envelope outside of explicit franchise fare. In an earlier decade, they may have been butts-in-the-seats draws. Movies like Hemsworth’s Black Hat or Pine’s Hell or High Water may have been solid studio performers in the 1990’s, but today they are (at best) leggy flicks that ride acclaim and Oscar glory to merely okay results.
Hell or High Water earned less in total, even with a Best Picture nomination than Star Trek Into Darkness’s opening Saturday.
Blackhat, In the Heart of the Sea and The Huntsman were all disappointments for the man who would be Thor. That says more about the moviegoing tastes in 2018 than it does about their talent. But audiences don’t care about seeing Captain Kirk playing someone who isn’t Captain Kirk, unless it’s a supporting/co-starring role in a franchise flick.
But having said that, there’s something to be said of a major actor being worth big bucks to reprise their defining franchise role. Brendan Fraser was worth $12.5 million for The Mummy Returns in 2001, but he certainly wasn’t worth it for anything else. Ditto Bryce Dallas Howard getting $8m for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. I’m guessing she didn’t make that much for Pete’s Dragon. And while Robert Downey Jr.’s The Judge was a whiff, he was worth his weight in gold for an MCU movie (or even a Sherlock Holmes sequel). So, yes, it’s a conundrum.
Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth must ask themselves if they’d rather make Star Trek 4 for less money or not make Star Trek 4 at all. I would argue, without knowing what their schedule looks like, that it would be worth more to have a modest box office hit on their resume than not, even if they themselves pocket a little bit less cash this time around. It’s not unlike Chris Pratt’s conundrum, where he is worth a bazillion bucks in Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World but is a coin toss outside of those branded properties.
A year ago, I’d argue that Paramount would be begging for another Star Trek movie whether it does well or not. But Jim Gianopulos’s “new” Paramount has been on a winning streak, with A Quiet Place, Book Club and Mission: Impossible – Fallout scoring big bucks and leggy runs. We’ll see how the rest of the year plays out, like if Bumblebee works this Christmas. If a solid 2018 leads to solid figures for Top Gun 2, Wonder Park and James Cameron’s Terminator revamp, then Paramount might be able to put Star Trek into the “my way or the highway” box.
Making a Star Trek 4 without Captain Kirk wouldn’t necessarily be a death knell. Heck, having a big adventure where the Enterprise (Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg and John Cho) is caught without its Captain might make a worthwhile adventure. And it wasn’t so long ago (from Transformers in 2007 to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 2014) when Paramount was the best studio in Hollywood went it came to selling big-scale franchise fare. If they have some of their mojo back, then… well, the ball may be in Chris and Chris’s court.
