Trek XI Convinced Paramount To Pass On Halo?

Like Star Trek XI, the Halo movie was one of the more anticipated films planned for 2008. Now the film is in limbo, and apparently Trek is partially to blame. After losing financing from Universal and Fox, the Halo producers (Peter Jackson and Microsoft) pinned their hopes on Warner Brothers and Paramount. According to IESB, Abrams and Trek factored into Paramount’s decision to say no. IESB quotes a Paramount exec as saying

Why share a franchise with other parties when we own Star Trek and have a real director doing that film?.

Paramount confident in Abrams Trek
The views expressed by the Paramount exec show the studio’s confidence in Abrams and Trek XI. Halo is actually the second film that Paramont gave Trek a priority over; Paramount pulled Jon Favreau’s ‘John Carter of Mars’ off their 2008 list to make room for Abrams Star Trek XI. As TrekMovie has reported before, Paramount assume this film will be one of their ‘tentpoles’ for 2008. We are also told that (as the above quote indicates), Paramount do expect Abrams to direct Trek XI. Even though the film has yet to get the official go ahead, Paramount seem to be banking on this one. However, the story of the Halo movie is a cautionary tale…things do change in Hollywood.

 

 

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Im glad they are not making the Halo movie. Honestly with how much money Peter Jackson and Micosoft have they can make the movie themselves.

Oh crap.

As much as I adore Abrams, as well as “Lost” and “Alias,” I really hope we’re not being set up for a fall.

You know, kinda like when the teaser posters for “Star Trek V” showed nothing more than a theater seat with a saety harness attached, promising a roller coaster ride?

However, I’ll remain upbeat about Abrams and XI, at least until we hear that Tom Cruise will indeed be wearing the pointed ears.

Correction.

I hope Paramount isn’t setting itself up for a fall.

You know, kinda like when they opened “Nemesis” right after the new James Bond film and less than a week before “The Two Towers?”

Summer 2008 is going to be jam-packed:

1) Iron Man
2) Narnia sequel
3) Wolverine
4) The Dark Knight (BB sequel)
5) The Incredible Hulk (maybe)
6) Hellboy 2
7) Indiana Jones 4 (a very big maybe here)
8) Toy Story 3
9) And of course, Star Trek.

Bottom line, that’s a busy summer slate. Star Trek is not going to make $200 million, I don’t care who they cast in this movie. If it breaks $100 million, that would be superb given past performance. In that sense, I am curious to know what Paramount expects of this movie.

I could care less about another video game movie!

I’m bummed. I was really looking forward to the Halo movie. Not that I’m disappointed it got shelved in favor of Trek XI, but I’m one of those have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too type of guys.

“real director”? Well that just goes to show what comes first to a studio exec once again. It does not matter how creative or talented a person can be, if they are not “known” than they are not a “real” talent. Because god knows that Speilberg was quite well known before JAWS, as was Lucas before American Graffeti and Star Wars, or Cameron before Terminator, or even Abrams before Alias and Lost.

I think they were referring to Stuart Baird. Who fails at life in general.

I found a whole pile of Nemesis deleted scenes on YouTube last night… scenes not on my DVD! There’s the full Wesley scene long rumored about and a beautiful scene where Geordi and Worf go through Data’s quarters. Both great scenes, and, like the deleted scenes I had already scene, could have improved Nemesis tenfold.

Stuart Baird is a fool. J. J. Abrams is not. Abrams is a “real” director.

Actually I am pretty sure they are referring to Neill Blomkamp’, the signed director of HALO, since the entire statement is an exec’s comparison “their” Star Trek franchise to them choosing to not sign off on HALO. Studio execs have limited attention spans…………they probably wouldn’t even remember Nemisis unless u showed it to them.

Given the history of movies based on video games, this decision makes sense.

Give me Kirby’s Dreamland:The Movie!

That’s the only video game of the past 15 years I give a crap about.

-cs™

Screw Paramount!!

They have made alot of retarded moves with Star Trek. They do anything concerning it half-assed then expect it to become a money tree. They expected MI: III to make millions of more than it did yet it didn’t lose any money, in fact it made more than Superman Returns yet they tell Tom Cruise to f’ himself???

They deserve to loose the franchise and let a studio with some common sense to take it into the future. If they are smart they will do it more justice this time and make it great again……..

Good luck Mr Abrams, your dealing with a bunch of knobs.

Darth “manhood of steel” Ballz

Regardless of the rantings of an illiterate fan like Darth Ballz, Paramount is smart to pass. Video game movies always suck. That’s unlikely to change.

Trek XI has a chance to be very good. Here’s hoping.

uhh! Bi-tor,

Ya don’t know me dude, keep your comments to the topic…

Darth “I insn’t Bi” Ballz

Lord Ballz,

Correction: Mission: Impossible III made $133 million domestically, versus Superman Returns, which brought in $200 million. With Tom Cruise’s extremely favorable payment on gross revenue percentage, Paramount lost a ton of money on that movie, and they thought it should have made much more anyway, but Cruise was such a nutjob in the press that they felt he turned off women (and men), thus killing the movie’s ability to make a profit. I think in that sense Paramount was correct. Was Paramount classless in their dispatching of Cruise? Yes. Paramount is a penny-pinching studio. Always has been. They would sell kittens to a sweater factory if they knew it would turn a profit. Sumner Redstone is a flake. He keeps saying he consulted his trophy wife about how to handle Tom Cruise. Are you kidding me?

This is why Star Trek has been in dire straights for so long. Neglect. And abuse by some very greedy and uninformed people. However, in Abrams I trust. I hope one day someone cool buys Paramount, someone like Charlie Bludhorn, the head of Gulf & Western in the 1980s (G&W owned Paramount at the time). Bludhorn hired Harve Bennett after TMP, and we all know what came of that arrangment.

Let’s please stay on topic and don’t trash the other posters.

Box office mojo

Superman Returns

Domestic: $200,072,600 51.2%
+ Foreign: $191,000,000 48.8%
= Worldwide: $391,072,600

Mission impossible

Domestic: $133,501,348 33.7%
+ Foreign: $262,193,907 66.3%
= Worldwide: $395,695,255

Nuff said………..

Darth “Snap” Ballz

Superb site guys. I agree with your observation in post #7 ACB, and if anything falls through with proposed director J.J. Abrams, then Paramount should BEG, BORROW, OR STEAL this guy Neill Blomkamp, who I believe would have given us all a videogame-based movie UNLIKE any other.

My son and I are bitterly disappointed that Universal and Fox have bailed on the Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital involved “Halo” movie.

Aintitcoolnews.com have a link to one of his amazing effects-filled short films called “Alone in Joburg” from their latest “Halo” story. I urge you all to check to check this mini masterpiece out. Give this guy a franchise to work on NOW!

I like your style, Ballz

Studios care a lot more about domestic grosses because they take a larger chunk of revenue from that (foreign distribution is usually split with other companies, making Pramount’s slice significantly smaller). But your use of foreign box office figures further illustrates my point that AMERICAN audiences obviously have soured on Cruise and that’s why Mission: Impossible III (a movie that did very well overseas) failed to make more money here in the States. It’s a good action movie. It came out in the early part of the summer, with no competition. And it still failed to do well. Cruise’s strange public behavior messed that movie up. And like I said before, Paramount acted unprofessionally when they cut him loose.

I know from talking to various people here in the UK that none of them would go to see MI:III because (a) they really dislike Tom Cruise these days and (b) they didn’t like the first two films.

I wanted to see it, but was too busy working to get around to it! It’s on my Christmas list though!

Thanks Adam,

I just think it’s funny that people will not go see a movie because of some personal issue with someone who they don’t know personally? I could care less about what a actor does in their personal life. If a movie is good then whats the point? If you take into account ALL the money that Cruise has made for Paramount then the reasoning is even more questionable?

Darth “Kerry = foot in mouth” Ballz

LOL! Kirby’s Dreamland? is that like original NES?

I don’t play video games much anymore… I guess I’m just too old. ;-P The last videogame movie I saw was Resident Evil, and sorry, I thought it sucked… Avoided Silent Hill for the same reason. Video game movies are the suck.

That being said, Toy Story 3? I thought that project had been given the bullet already… I’m very affraid.

Dom, check it out when you can, it’s actually a fun action movie.

Lord Ballz, I agree that it is silly that people take their personal gripes with them into a movie theater. I think Tom Cruise is a putz, but so what? If he makes an entertaining movie, I’m there to watch it. I think the media really ganged up on Cruise and tore him down. Cruise made it easy for the press because he kept acting like a nut.

But you’re right, something was behind the Paramount decision and I believe that it was all about money. Cruise had an arrangement where he was getting paid $10 million annually by Paramount to run his production offices off the lot, and that all his projects from that office were to be exclusively done through Paramount. So, it was a retainer fee. On top of that, Cruise has very favorable back-end deals on his pictures where he can walk away with $20-50 million depending on the gross (not profit) of the picture. I’m guessing Paramount got really tired of that deal. And like I said earlier, Sumner Redstone strikes me as a flake. Maybe he’s right that Tom Cruise became box office poison (thanks to the press tearing him down!), but that doesn’t justify Redstone’s public statements, nor his silly reliance on Mrs. Redstone’s opinions on how to run his company.

One thing is clear, Abrams did not carry any blame for Mission: Impossible’s disappointing domestic take. And that’s a fair deal because the movie was good. Abrams shows a lot of promise as a film director, I want to see him take a shot at Trek.

As for the Halo business, I fail to see why Microsoft can’t finance the whole shebang themselves, given how super-rich they are! They probably make three times the budget in half a day! ;)

All they’d need is a distributor!

I also hope Abrams directs the film. I’ve really enjoyed the various TV episodes he’s directed.

The whole issue with video game movies involved two major issues:

1. The videogames that have been made into films did not actually have any form of a plot anyways (perhaps except resident evil, though the games plot can be argued to be rather weak.)

2. Everyone that has come in to either produce, direct, or write a videogame film have been some of the lowest denominators in the areas of creativity and originality. With the likes of Paul Anderson (director of Mortal kombat and Resident Evil——-i still want to kick him in the balls for Alien vs. Predator), Uwe Boll, and a small handful of others videogame movies have gotten a very bad presentation because in the end……….these guys just really suck at making films. The big problem from this is that like many things in hollywood, if a studio exec sees that a few videogame films failed then that “must” mean that “all” of them will fail.

Look at it this way, if other creators had been involved with now familiar projects that we have come to enjoy we may not have such affection for a little green muppet with words of wisdom, college students or billionaires dressing up in costumes, or even with a man wearing “point ears” and spoating notions of logic may have all seemed like crap as well. Its all a matter of who does it and how well they do it.

Reguardless of the director, stars, etc. I’t seems that science fiction is in such a dark place right now.How can the”meaning” to Trek stand against it without being outdated? Alot of you would disagree but I think Trek needs at least a decade to make people want it again. A 50th ann. movie would kick ass!!!

Dath “prarie dogg’in” Ballz

Darth Ballz.

To an extent, I understand where you’re coming from, but the ‘decade rest’ ideal is what die-hard fans who’ve stuck it through all the recent incarnations of the show need.

Many, many of us threw our hands up in disgust more than a decade ago and walked away from Trek. It ceased to be anything like essential viewing for mainstream audiences by the mid-90s.

Given the show barely developed beyond occasional changes of name and cast, we watched other stuff while Trek droned way in the background, ignored. It might as well not have been on, for all most of us cared. The anodyne movies didn’t help!

Among the casual viewers and the fans who were driven away, there’s plenty of demand for good Star Trek under a new creative team. I think we’re getting that now, after our decade away from the show!

Dom

If you put out Star Trek again after Nemesis (5-6 years) and Enterprise (2-3 years) the casual viewer is going to feel that it’s just re-hash yet again.
Both the core fans and casual viewers can both really want Trek after a long break. Each series had it’s charms but it was tooooo much to soon.

I don’t want Abrams Trek to fail but everyone was crapping fun bubbles when John Logan was going to write Nemesis and what a turd that was.
New producing blood is a good thing and hope that Paramount gives Abrams his room to breath.

Not to slam the other creative forces but design, costumes, music, etc need to start from scratch, not the group that worked on Trek series and movies for 16 years. They did great but that also needs new blood…..

Darth “I’ve got your nemesis” Ballz

Actually Spielberg was quite well known before JAWS. He had gotten a lot of positive press for his first outing on TV’s Night Gallery for the episode he directed. His follow-up to that was the cult classic DUEL which also garnered him a lot of high praise. His successes with those two Universal projects landed him the ability to direct JAWS and make the film he wanted to make without a lot of studio interference.

The deleted scenes that are described in this thread are not on the single-disc release that Paramount issued shortly after the film came out. The deleted scenes are available on the 2-disc collectors edition which is in stores now. $9.95 at most Best Buy stores.

As for video game movies, as a rule they stink. But having seen a lot of the proposed design artwork on various websites and reading interviews with the various parties involved HALO has a shot at making the genre rise above the mediocre crap that has been forced upon us up to this point. The film has not been cancelled its just that the studios that were involved bailed on it. Peter Jackson and WETA are still continuing development work on the film while they continue to seek a new studio partner/distributor.

Finally NEMESIS was a stinker from the get-go. Stuart Baird has a lot of good credits under his belt. He started as an editor and that gives him a much better insight to directing then some others have. You can only do so much with a lousy script and Paramount was more interested in getting another Trek movie out than taking the time to get a good script and do it right. Its a case of decision being dictated by greed than any real motivation to release a great film. J. J. Abrams will probably be a brath of fresh air to the franchise. The downside of this is that this will likely be his only outing in the Trek Universe. Unless he directs this film only has a shot at being better than the worst Trek film and as good as any of the other films. It won’t do stellar boxoffice without a dynamite story and an ad campaign that drives ticket sales. With a weak ad campaign and a lousy script the film will still do decent business only because it says STAR TREK on the title.

Paramount has a habit of turning down other properties because they believe that STAR TREK is the only francise they need. They passed on B5 and then developed their clone DS9. They are passing on HALO because they believe that TREK XII will save thier butts and breath fresh air into the series. Again, Abrams will have to direct for this to happen or it will just be an ok TREK film.

There is no rule that says you can only have one genre (sci-fi) franchise at a studio. Until Paramount gets over this concept they are doomed to crank out mediocre Trek films and they will consistently miss opportunities to make good films that appeal to a wider audience than the STAR TREK does.

I love TREK but if I were running Paramount I’d be looking for more franchise opportunities instead of counting on MI or TREK films to keep the doors open.

A true observation in post #25 ACB.

It’s the Directors who are able to call the shots (as opposed to the ones at the mercy of too much studio interference) that are the main driving force of any GREAT movie. It is they, more than anyone surely, who either makes a great movie due to their casting decisions and other creative choices, or a DUD.

Imagine, say, if “ALIENS V PREDATOR” had been done by Ridley Scott or James Cameron. It may have stood a chance.

Good points in post #29 Dave.

And I am cheerleading for proposed “Halo” Director, Neill Blomkamp ( post #18 ) for “Trek movie reboot II”, so that your fears of J.J. moving on after his stint HAVE LESS CHANCE of coming true…ANYONE really EXCEPT Uwe Boll or Paul Anderson!

Instead of another video game movie, HALO, they should screenplay the inspiration for it, Larry Nivens Ringworld, a much better and more imaginative story than another shoot ’em up for the big screen.

Unfortunately, there’s a huge youth gameplaying movie demographic out there who have not played a Ringworld game…