acroyear's Journal: Occasionally, I know movies...

In another mailing list, talking on ST:Nemesis, some chap suggested that there will be another ST movie 'cause it "makes a lot of money" for Paramount. In reply, I wrote:

however, only having a $27 mil opening week for a 100+ mil film isn't exactly "a lot of money"...and there's no followup. LOTR:TTT is gonna trounce on everything until christmas, and well into next year. Paramounts only (though probably reliable) hope for that film to break even is home video and HBO licensing. Insurrection and ST-V both became profitable (barely) to that market.

some chap wrote in reply:

LOTR us a red herring here. You can't say that one movie sucked simply because another movie is likely to do much better. They're completely different kinds of movies, with different styles, different actors and different production companies. There's no basis for comparison other than the fact that both are opening within a week of each other.

my word at the time:

I wasn't asserting that Nemesis sucked because of the upcoming TTT release, only that TTT is going to sell so well that everybody else is going to be off the map entirely, relatively speaking. Yes, Nemesis may still be #2 or #3, but the dropoff between week 1 and week 2 is going to be FAR worse than the usual 30-50% The bad reviews and a bigger hit coming out combined will knock Nemesis for a loop this next week. It won't be profitable, much less "a lot of money", until the video/dvd, if at all.

My final word on the subject: Lord of the Rings : $61.5 million over weekend (total, 100mil)
Nemesis : last weekend 18mil, this weekend, 4.4 mil. a drop over 70%.

So I think I was right here... I predict Paramount won't bother, as this one was supposed to have captured the "magic" of ST2:Khan, whatever that is that they seem unable to duplicate. If Paramount can't figure it out, and it loses them $100+mil each time they fail, I'm guessing its time to leave the movies alone...

But then again, I don't run a studio, do I?