While the reboot of ‘Star Trek’ had fans polarized, it did have a nice landing at the box office. ‘Star Trek: Into Darkness‘ didn’t do quite as well but it still warranted ‘Star Trek: Beyond‘ to be made and sadly it, too, fell a bit short on performance. While fans generally enjoyed ‘Beyond,’ the box office was not kind to it. Now actor and co-writer Simon Pegg has opened up on why he feels it flopped:
“I think it was poorly marketed, to be honest. If you look at a film like Suicide Squad, that was around for such a long time before it finally came out and people were so aware of it. Whereas with Star Trek Beyond, it was left too late before they started their marketing push. It still did great business, but it was disappointing compared to Into Darkness.”
The film also used the big reveal of the use of Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” in the trailer which the filmmakers initially wanted not to have known until audiences saw it in the theater as a callback to the first film. Oh, and don’t even forget that there was no mention of the film being released in the year of Star Trek’s 50’th anniversary and being marketed solely as an action-adventure movie in space.
With the movie having to likely earn twice its production budget to break even and pulling in $343 million gross on a $185 million budget, that probably put at roughly $27 million in the hole.
Pegg doesn’t believe the problem was with the movie either as he was quite proud of his work on it:
“From a professional standpoint for me, it was such a great experience in the end, because the critical response that we did get was exactly what Doug Jung and I and Justin Lin had hoped for which was a much more favorable response in terms of being Star Trek and not just something there that’s disguised as Star Trek.”
So yes, it wasn’t the movie but all the trailers:
“I was really angry about that because it used ‘Sabotage,’ which was our surprise moment in the end. It was supposed to be a very fun and heightened twist, and something that was a big surprise and they blew it in the first trailer, which really annoyed me. They also made the film look like a boneheaded action film. And they were scared, I think, of mentioning the 50th Anniversary. It was fumbled as a thing; they didn’t know what to do with it, and it’s a real shame. But I came away from it really, really happy and very proud of it.”
Although ‘Beyond’ didn’t do as well as expected, it hasn’t stopped the powers that be from working on another ‘Star Trek’ sequel:
“There’s a script that’s been written, and there’s also the story of Quentin Tarantino coming and chatting with J.J. about an idea that he’s had for a long time. That idea is going into the writer’s room to be looked at. I think it might take something like him to restart it. It’s an interesting proposition, although I don’t know if that means everybody will be blowing each other’s heads off with phasers and calling Klingons mother f*****s, but, who knows, that could be fun.”
We’re still not entirely sure if Tarantino‘s ‘Star Trek’ movie will be another film in the style of the current “Star Trek” or something else entirely. All we know is that fans would love to see at least one more solid “Star Trek” movie sooner than later and hopefully whoever gives us the next one can deliver that.
Do you agree that the marketing killed ‘Star Trek: Beyond’ or do you feel that Simon Pegg was wrong and we weren’t actually given a solid film? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Geek Exchange
