Even though he still hasn’t seen a script, Chris Pine sounds about ready to board the Enterprise once again in WandaVision director Matt Shakman’s Star Trek 4.
The actor also happens to be hitting the press trail in support of both action thriller The Contractor and spy story All the Old Knives, so it was inevitable that the questioning would eventually circle back around to his involvement in the beloved sci-fi franchise.
While the Kelvin timeline has proven to be plenty popular, a cumulative box office haul of almost $1.2 billion against total production costs of $525 million doesn’t make Star Trek a top-tier property from a purely commercial perspective.
Speaking to Deadline, Pine shared that he didn’t think it should even be aiming for the same stratosphere as the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Star Wars anyway, but he admits that’s how the industry works these days.
“We always tried to get the huge international market. It was always about making the billion dollars. It was always this billion-dollar mark because Marvel was making a billion. Billion, billion, billion. We struggled with it because Star Trek, for whatever reason, its core audience is rabid. Like rabid, as you know. To get these people that are interested that maybe are Star Wars fans or think Star Trek is not cool or whatever, proven to be … we’ve definitely done a good job of it but not the billion-dollar kind of job that they want.
I’ve always thought that Star Trek should operate in the zone that is smaller. You know, it’s not a Marvel appeal. It’s like, let’s make the movie for the people that love this group of people, that love this story, that love Star Trek. Let’s make it for them and then, if people want to come to the party, great. But make it for a price and make it, so that if it makes a half-billion dollars, that’s really good.”
The best option for Star Trek 4 would be to make it smaller, cheaper, and definitely better, but given how spectacle drives every studio-backed blockbuster at the end of the day, that’s probably not how the movie is going to turn out.