Actually there never a bona fide actual 3 years in length gap between Trek film releases until INSURRECTION-NEMESIS and that was part of a bona fide 4 year gap which had 3 Trek TV series to bridge it.

The trouble I see with attempting to draw a SW analogy is that Lucas was able to use the fortune from the first feature to become independent and create his own movie studio which he could devote largely to churning out the sequels as was his wont. As successful as any fan might want to champion any of the Trek feature films, none of them were THAT successful. Abrams, et al, have to work for a living in the mean time which means that extra time between Trek film releases is not equivalent to more time being spent working on that to be released film.

In the spirit of the season, I’d say the scariest looming possibility is that the next film completes filming in early 2011 and isn’t released till 2012 because Paramount executives decide to test screen it to death to eliminate any and all possibility of anything less than a STAR WARS box office run.

TMP’s supporting cast had the benefit of two series (one animated) to get a lock on their characters that survived the chasm to that first feature. The 2009 crew had mere blips of screen time and yet established their characterizations admirably. If too much time passes it may be at best a bit of a chore for the next production to reclaim what those actors created in the first – especially if they’ve had fruitful careers in the intervening years. I’m not saying they aren’t talented enough to establish something equally artistic to replace anything they are unable to recapture, but it can strike a dissonant chord with an audience that Paramount is anticipating will buy home videos that will be watched over, and over, and over again in the intervening years.

FWIW, TESB started filming less than 2 years after SW’s initial release and well within 18mos of SW’s end of theatrical run.

Who’s with me?

Nemesis comes a close second, though. The cast of TNG deserved a far, far better sendoff than that.

And the 2 plus year thing goes for the bulk of the Trek movies – they were worth the wait — especially the original cast ones. It was only with V and all the TNG movies except First Contact where I asked “you guys kept us waiting for this??”

But, really. Isn’t around (or at least) 3 years the norm for sequels? And the Harry Potter and LOTR movies, on top of simultaneous filming, had original source material to draw from — they knew, generally, what stories they would be filming…

Don’t get me wrong, it would be great if this thing was out next Tuesday. But it doesn’t seem really unusual in the world of big budget movies.

And I kind of like that this is taking time. Before seeing Anthony’s list, I’d actually thought that the TNG movies came out much closer to each other, because to me it really seemed like this franchise machine was just kind of turning them out between work on the TV shows.

Any votes for biggest letdown after a long wait? I say the Matrix sequels…

It’s a skill I acquired in my college years flipping through microfilm and microfiche doing research. It also didn’t hurt that for a small portion of my years I had a perfectly functioning eidetic memory.

Anyway, I find those digging skills readily transferred to the interweb. It has its high and lows which, for me, makes it never boring.

For example, I thought I struck gold when I found the industry trade magazine appropriately titled BOXOFFICE for the years 1979-1982, but, oddly enough, it seems to only publish numbers for a film’s opening weeks and then it breaks it up into major regional markets of the U.S.

However it did provide evidence that the industry of “then” did regard TMP as a “success”:

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“Production has begun on STAR TREK II, Paramount’s sequel to its successful STAR TREK – THE MOTION PICTURE.” – BOXOFFICE, December 1981 issue, page 8, in the column HOLLYWOOD REPORT under the subsection PRODUCTION & DEVELOPMENT, 4th paragraph

and a period industry source for the budgets of the first two Trek films:

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“Though the first film cost an astronomical $40 million, this summer’s adventure on the Enterprise was completed for a mere $10 million, according to producer Robert Sallin.” – Associate Editor, BOXOFFICE, May 1982 issue, page 17, in the article ACTION ON SCREEN AND AT THE BOX OFFICES, last complete paragraph on the page.

Given the metric of that era was 3 times the production cost to break even and that the sequel was financed from the profits of TMP that would seem to set the minimum for TMP’s worlwide take, i.e. it could not possibly have been less than $130 million?

But I digress…It is a ponder as to whether the current movie’s organization could pull off their sequel with one fourth the budget of 2009?