Simon Pegg Thinks Paramount Dropped The Ball On the Star Trek Film Franchise

Simon Pegg was not only on screen in Star Trek Beyond, he worked behind them as well, and he feels like Paramount didn’t handle the franchise right. Pegg, who co-wrote 2016’s Star Trek Beyond, spoke with GamesRader about that film’s underperformance and how the studio has dropped the ball on how to market them to make a profit.

“The fact is, Star Trek movies don’t make Marvel money,” Pegg said. “They make maybe $500 million at the most, and to make one now, on the scale they’ve set themselves, is $200 million. You have to make three times that to make a profit.”

Beyond was absolutely a disappointment at the box office, and likely lost money as it grossed $343.5 million against a $185 million production budget plus an expensive marketing campaign. Pegg noted that the marketing could have been done much better, especially considering it was released on a milestone year for the franchise.

“They didn’t really take advantage of the 50th anniversary,” he said. “The regimen at the time dropped the ball on the promo of the film. And we’ve lost momentum. I think losing Anton [Yelchin] was a huge blow to our little family, and our enthusiasm to do another one might have been affected by that. So I don’t know [about another one].”

Star Trek is doing better on television, where Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard have been hits for CBS All-Access. The film future is much murkier, with plenty of potential ideas (like the Quentin Tarantino-written one and Noah Hawley’s potential film) but no firm plans.