To reignite its creaky "Star Trek" movie series this weekend, Paramount Pictures must beam up young moviegoers who may have never heard of Captain Kirk, Spock or the starship Enterprise, and international audiences who have been indifferent.
Paramount, despite having one of the most recognizable titles in entertainment, must overcome a perception that its new movie in the decades-old franchise will appeal only to aging Trekkies and not younger Twitter fanatics. The studio walks a fine line between attracting the under-25 crowd, which drives ticket sales in the crucial summer movie season, and keeping loyal followers of Gene Roddenberry's sci-fi classic on board.
The solution? Inject "Star Trek" with the kind of fast-paced action, effects trickery and superhero antics that more contemporary spectacles such as "Transformers" and "Iron Man" feature. And hire hip director J.J. Abrams and hope he can bring along with him the rabid fans of his TV shows "Lost," "Alias" and "Fringe."
To get what it wanted, however, Paramount ended up making the most expensive "Star Trek" ever.
"If you want me to do this, you need to do it right and give me the kind of resources that will allow for that," Abrams recalled saying in an interview.
Paramount delivered, spending some $30 million on visual effects alone -- three times what was spent for the last "Star Trek" in 2002. The newest installment of the franchise that spawned five TV series and 10 movies cost about $140 million to make and $150 million to market and distribute worldwide, according to people familiar with the situation.
"Our goal was to go back to the beginning and relaunch this for a broad audience," Paramount Vice Chairman Rob Moore said. When "Star Trek" opens on 14,000 screens worldwide, it faces stiff competition for the testosterone crowd. It will be up against 20th Century Fox's sci-fi sequel "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," which grossed an estimated $87 million in its opening last weekend.
But "Wolverine," which has had three previous hits in recent years, had a ready-made audience. Paramount has to work harder, considering its last "Star Trek" movie, in 2002, grossed just $67 million worldwide and that only one in the series -- "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" -- hit $100 million in U.S. ticket sales.
