Star Trek is one of those franchises that will always be popular. As such, we'd expect the newest film, Star Trek Beyond, to have a solid opening weekend. However, we're a bit surprised by the estimates for the film's opening weekend box office take. While Star Trek Beyond is expected to win the weekend easily, experts say the film will bring in about $60 million. While that's a solid chunk of change, it's well below what the other films in the current franchise have done.
A $60 million dollar opening weekend is nothing to sneeze at. Not only will it almost certainly make Star Trek Beyond number one at the box office this weekend, it also would have been good enough to win several of the weekends this summer. But as The Wrap points out, $60 million is down significantly from the $70 million weekend that Star Trek Into Darkness had. And that number was itself down from the $75 million that the first film in the reboot franchise saw. While this is probably not a major problem (the other two films are still the highest grossing movies in the entire Star Trek franchise and the only ones to gross over $200 million domestically), the continual decline of the current series is probably not good news in the long run.
2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the Star Trek brand. As such, you might expect that people would be a little more excited for a new Star Trek movie than they might otherwise be. Star Trek Beyond has also been getting stellar reviews, with many viewing it as the best of the recent movies. If there's been a problem with the movie, however, it may be in the marketing. The first trailer for Beyond was blasted by many fans, including Simon Pegg who co-wrote the screenplay and had a supporting role. If Star Trek fans were looking forward to a new Star Trek movie, that's not what they saw in the first trailer. Now Simon Pegg has warned fans against watching any more ads for the film. If you've accidentally seen one, you know why. They appear to contain some significant spoilers. Luckily, there are no spoilers in the trailer below.
Whether Star Trek Beyond's ad campaign is actually turning people away from the movie or not is hard to tell. It's also possible that the film could still exceed expectations. Several movies this summer have done significantly better than initial impressions implied.
Are you planning on checking out Star Trek Beyond this weekend? Let us know why, or why not.
