Thursday brings more data on how JJ Abrams’ Star Trek movie is playing with both the industry community and the public at large. Star Trek has been nominated for one SAG award, and the Las Vegas Film Critics have handed Star Trek two awards. And in the mainstream we have the latest sales info on how well Star Trek is doing in home video.
SAG Honors Star Trek stunts + Vegas Critics honor Giacchino and ILM
The Screen Actors Guild nominations were announced today and although the main cast didn’t get any nods, the ones taking the hits were recognized. Star Trek was nominated for Outstanding Performance for a Stunt Ensemble. It is going up against Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Public Enemies. The full list of nominees is at sagawards.org.
The Las Vegas Film critics have joined critics groups from Washington DC, Boston and Austin in honoring Star Trek. The film picked up two wins for Austin’s Best of 2009. Michael Giacchino won Best Score for his work on Trek. Plus Star Trek was also honored for Best Visual Effects.
Star Trek DVD #4 in 4th week of release + #5 2009 movie at iTunes
Just as it did with the theatrical release, the Star Trek movie is proving to have ‘legs’ in its home video release. Home Media Magazine reports that in its fourth week of release Star Trek has held on to the #4 spot in DVD sales, surpassing the sales of other films released after Trek including Night at the Museum 2, Angels & Demons, Bruno, and Terminator Salvation. The top three spots were all taken up by new releases.
Top 5 DVDs For week ending 12/13
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
- Public Enemies
- Julie & Julia
- Star Trek
- Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
Also last week Apple released its ‘Rewind 2009‘ list of top selling media and with just three weeks of sales Star Trek was still the fifth best selling movie of the year.
Apples Top 2009 Movies on iTunes
- "Twilight"
- "Pineapple Express"
- "Quantum of Solace"
- "The Proposal"
- "Star Trek"
- "Zack and Miri Make a Porno"
- "X-Men Origins: Wolverine"
- "Paul Blart: Mall Cop"
- "Up"
- "Bolt"
How do the DVD sales add up in terms of dollars? Does anyone know?
Since the production and marketing costs of this movie were especially high, especially for a Trek movie, I’d like to have a better idea as to how much farther they’ve moved into the black including DVD and Blu-ray sales since the movie left theaters.
DVD sales figures are hard to come by but Star Trek has been in the black since June. This is all gravy. The studio chiefs like Dauman and Grey have talked up how Trek (and other q4 releases) have helped move the studio back into profit overall.
thanks everybody!
Thanks boborci!
Yeah, we should be thanking you, Mr. Orci. In my case, you’ve brought my heroes back to life and rescued James T. Kirk from the limbo he was once constrained to.
thank YOU mr orci & team
Did anyone else weep during the DVD commentary when JJ described the opening title sequence and the score and how it was designed to indicate that Star Trek was back? No? Oh, uh, then neither did I.
I still have some Christmas shopping to do and all my realtives are getting a copy!! (Well the ones who don’t have it yet.)
Congrats, Bob, JJ and everyone else involved with Trek 2009! Oscar or no, this film has definitely had an impact not only on the franchise, but on science fiction movie-making as a whole.
Bob and company, I wanted to thank you for bringing back Star Trek. I forced family and friends to go see it and now they can’t wait for the next one. By far you guys have done an excellent job. From the bottom of my heart, I thank yall!!!
Long may the gravy train run!
Fan-friggin-tastic! I loved this movie so much. Ive watched the movie more times than I care to admit. Thank you Mr. Abrams, Mr. Orci, Mr. Kurtzman and everyone else who was part of Star Trek 2009.
I know I will get crucified by the other forum members for saying this, but I cannot get why everyone is so overenthusiastic. Please don’t get me wrong, I really love Trek, I wished for a great movie. And to be fair the characters are great (except for the fact that scotty seems to be on speed all the time). But the story was weak, the villain laughably flat and the if you have a minimum science education you just notice a lot of stupid blunders that make you fall out of the movie while you watch it. I don’t want to nitpick, I know it is science fiction, but within the context of the story everything should be plausible. And Star Trek always built on existing science. So when I here of a “supernova that threatens to destroy the galaxy” or of black hole generating “red matter” and traveling through black holes I just want to rip Robert Orci’s hair out.
I can live with all the new things, the new characters (actually loved the new crew), the new ship, hell, I’ll even buy the timeline crap. And there is nothing wrong with a little action. But PLEASE NO MORE STAR TREK FOR DUMMIES.
Cheers everybody. Don’t crucify me, this is just my honest opinion.
Live long and prosper :-)
They are a couple of weeks behind in their data, but this gives you a good picture of the DVD sales:
http://www.the-numbers.com/dvd/charts/weekly/thisweek.php
After two weeks, Star Trek had sold approx. 4.3 million DVD’s for a total of $60.5 million.
When you are on that page, you can click on any movie and get its weekly breakdown.
To be honest, I was surprised to see the numbers for Star Trek drop so much from week one to week two. Even though there were a lot of mainstream people who went and saw the movie in the theaters, I’m still guessing over half the movie theater tickets sold were by a core group of hardcore fans with multiple viewings.
So when it comes to DVD sales, each hardcare fan is only buying one DVD — it’s not like they are going to the movies to see it four times, which pads the numbers. So the DVD sales might not hold up as much as we would hope or expect.
Just to add: I quote from the Avatar-review on trekmovie.com
“Just as with J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, Avatar will clearly be divisive—an overrated white elephant for those for whom a movie is story, originality and, tellingly, the right kind of politics…and a revelation to anyone who can be pulled through a movie by the power of pure filmmaking”
Couldn’t have said it better. But the pulling through only works if you buy the setting and what the movie tells you.
#14
In addition, I forgot to mention that all those hardcore fans ran out and bought their copy the first week it was for sale. So this also makes me wonder how well the DVD sales will hold up.
#2 – Anthony, that’s a LOT o’ gravy…!
13
I agree with many of your points
I am a huge Trek fan and I did love this film but I do admit that this movie had one of the weakest scripts and Nero was by no means a great villain. God you have to read the comics to a better rounded character.
The film was great fun and the team got the essences of the characters right but to say this is the best ever Trek is an overstatement. I think this is a great movie but there are lots of previous Trek adventures which were better than this movie.
I congratualte the team for making Trek popular again, to me Trek has always been cool. But I will not be lying to myself and saying that it is a smart script when it clearly wasn’t.
I disagree with the guy who claimed the new movie has been dumbed down for the Homer Simpson mentality but I do admit that the new movie is a bit toneed down from past Treks. However I still like the new movie.
There is a quote Orci uses on the blu ray feature that Star Trek was the classical music and that Star Wars was rock n roll and that Trek needed a bit of rock n roll.
Yet I still love Trek as classical music.
I do find it annoying that a more dumbed down trek is more popular than a more highbrow one.
#7 – Wasn’t that the end title sequence? How the original Alexander Courage theme and the “strange new worlds” were to indicate that Trek was back?
Because if it was, no, I didn’t get a lump in my throat, either… nor did I watch the ending over and over again on DVD, with a big dopey grin on my face…
ST has about $75 million in DVD sales and about $25 million in bluray sales…so $100 million together!
I agree mostly with you captain_neill. I also enjoyed the movie (after an initial disappointment). And I am grateful that they made it popular again, gave it new prospects.
But I really hope the next one will be a crossover between classical music AND Rock N Roll, to use your metaphor. :-)
I just don’t get why they have such stupid errors in there the Spock watching a basketball sized vulcan in the sky of some planet delta vega. Or the supernova crap. Really makes you wonder whether the authors just don’t know and didn’t have any advisors or if they simply didn’t care because the blockbuster aspect would hook in enough people anyway.
I am very happy Paramount is making money with ST. I hope it is enough to make CBS want to make a new Star Trek TV series.
I bought S3 of TOS on BD today. Looking forward to watching it in hi def, like never seen before :)
Finally, I found a site that tracks all DVD sales. Thought I would share it, http://www.the-numbers.com/dvd/charts/annual/2009.php
So far in 2009,
# 7 Star Trek 4,297,113 $60,562,206 11/17/2009
And by the way: It’s much less hostile here than other trek forums. Well, for now ;-)
#23 its 2 weeks out of date on DVD sales, and doesn’t include well over a million bluray sales.
#25, oh ok, noted.
#3 “thanks everybody!” ????
Wait a second, is that message from the real Orci and Kurtzman of ST?
@27 Yeah, Bob pops in from time to time.
Congrats Bob Orci & Co.!
@19 I don’t think you can accurately make the comparison by calling the movie “dumbed down”. There were more than a few TOS episodes that were incredibly dumb… and dumber!
@29
Correct. But these episodes did not have $150 Millions to monkey around with.
For a movie / budget this big, you would expect something more than a light headed, dumbed down popcorn movie.
Bob is a regular and welcome guest. Other Trek luminaries drop by. You can be sure when you see a name here like Mike Okuda, Rick Sternbach, Alan Dean Foster, Bob Orci, or others that it is the real person.
The site has a ‘instaban’ policy towards anyone impersonating actual real-life people.
I first have to say….
Congrads to everyone involved with the movie production.
BUT, lets not get too carried away….
If the Trek franchise is to live long and prosper… it must deliver a solid sequel. A sequel that improves upon all the mistakes made in this movie. The sequel must be more meaningful. Roger Ebert even echoed this concern with the new Trek.
“The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action.” -ebert
I PARTLY agree with Mr.Ebert.
P.S:
PLEASE BOB and ALEX, NO MORE STAR WARS REFERENCES IN A TREK MOVIE…. ok ?
Thanks boborci. You wrote it :)
***CONGRATULATIONS JJ, Bob, Alex and crew of ST09!!!
Still going at warp speed selling the DVDs and Blue Rays – awesome!
Don’t like the rating, Star Trek should have been #1…….then again, I will admit that opinion is stated with bias.
I couldn’t agree more with jas_montreal (32) and Mr. Ebert. Great characters with a lot of potential, great choice of actors but storywise Star trek has been reduced to loud and colorful action. But why can’t we not have action AND Roddenberry style stories (qoute “with questions of science, ideals or philosophy”). I mean come on, we have brains too. give them something to play with. Not just laughs and eye candy. As much as it pains me to say this (and I say it because I care), this movie was a bit dumbed down.
Cupcake, you da man!!!
@28 Well, I’ll be damned. trekmovie.com is fantastic already, but if Bob & Orci read it, it makes it all the more intriguing.
Bob/Orci, if you are reading this, I think you would of been proud to see the crowds seeing your movie at the IMAX theatre here in Montreal this summer. I am in my mid 30s, which is the age of the crowd I expected to see, but I was surprised to see a lot of teens going. One day, there was an entire classroom that showed up and they actually erupted into applause at the end, which is something I rarely see at any movie here.
Speaking of Cupcake…I really hope Bob will give me story credit if he uses my “Star Trek: The Wrath of Cupcake” idea. The film opens in the Budweiser brewery as Cupcake seethes with resentment over the promotion of his *nemesis* to the Captain’s chair. He starts plotting an *insurrection* with his bar-brawl buddies. The film writes itself from there. And they’ll save a lot of money by hiring the Cupcake guy instead of Antonio Banderas.
@39 Speaking of Budweiser.
Engineering being an actual beer plant is the only concern I have about the movie. What happens if Budweiser refuses Paramount access in the future?
Also, lets face it here, huge barrels of beer don’t look like an engine room. I miss the slick warp core engineering of TNG.
Perhaps there is a CGI fix for this in the next movie; unless of course people love this new engineering. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate it, it simply could be better.
@39…. Hmmm… that kina sounds like a TNG movie… ;-p
@36 Gene Roddenberry was excellent, but personally I have a greater admiration for the story writing and intellect of Rick Berman. Many TNG and Enterprise episodes he wrote have allowed me to think deeper, and better understand many complex subjects e.g., ethics, values, honor, religion, freedom, technology, etc.
For me, meeting Rick Berman in person would be a greater honor than meeting a Prime Minister.
Yes mr orci prime-thank u for caring bout us trek fans and for the great movie u guys gave us! Heck i bought 1 blu ray dvd and 3 regular trek09 dvds myself n also got a playstation3 n a 32 inch vizio hd tv for my trek blu ray–just got the tv a couple weeks ago its awesome! And i lost me job last april so it hasnt been easy getting this either haha
@ 42. But Rick Berman never wrote any episodes for TNG or Enterprise.
oh yeh i forgot i also paid 14 bucks to download a copy of trek09 movie from the sony playstation store for my psp–
@43 Allow me to brag here a bit. :-)
So far this year, I bought
– Multiple IMAX tickets and 2 plain movie passes for ST XI.
– The comic book prequel to ST XI. Excellent TNG tie in.
– The ST XI paperback.
– The ST XI hardcover, signed. I bought it via trekmovie.com (I support this site with click throughs when I can but unfortunately there are rarely links to Canadian retailers e.g. amazon.ca).
– The ST XI audio soundtrack CD. Excellent for my ipod.
– TOS S1 2 3 on BD.
– All 10 TOS and TNG movies on BD.
– ST XI on BD (plain edition) Love the digi copy for ipod.
– ST XI on BD with the little metal ship. http://tinyurl.com/yjbfusa
– 4 ST XI coffee mugs
Nice collection huh? ;-D
@Lestat: Well, I don’t know about the meeting Rick Berman part ;-), but I agree that there were a lot of TNG, DS9 and even Enterprise episodes which were really deep compared what you normally see on television. I don’t mind if its akin to Roddenberry or Berman or whatever. As long as it is a bit deeper than the last movie. Again, I feel obliged to express my gratefulness for the successful rebirth of the francise. But this does not remedy the points mentioned. The writers know how to sell something, there is no doubt about that. They know all the mechanics. But next time, please give us something a bit more thought through, a bit more subtle and a more intelligent story.
I actually heard people comparing Star Trek to Transformers. No offense, but if a soulless (albeit fun) action movie like Transformers is considered on par with Star Trek then something is seriously wrong with Star Trek!
I guess it is really naive to assume that the studio sees Trek as more than a money making machine. But maybe one can have commercial success and a better story.
40.
Well, I was joking, of course. I think the Budweiser problem can be fixed with a “refit” overseen by Scotty. It only needs to be mentioned very briefly. The engineering set design by Ryan Church would really make the Enterprise whole and convincing as a ship propelled by warp drive.
@47 I seem to recall a recent comment by Abrams that they were planning a deeper storyline. He said something like going beyond just getting to learn about the new characters, how they met one another and their first voyager.
I would not want to be in Kurtzman and Orci’s shoes right now trying to come up with a new script that will top the first movie.
Well, that would be very nice if Abrams said that. Concerning Kurtzman and Orci, I am sure they can do it. There is no doubt about it that they know their business. And lets not forget, that storywise (concerning depth) the first movie should be easy to top ;-). I guess they were concerned with other things in the first one.
Let’s hope for the best