The Next Generation crew filmed Generations, First Contact, Insurrection and Nemesis. Then nothing. Why was there no follow up film?
I was expecting some kind of resolution to the Data / B4 story.
asked Oct 8, 2011 at 10:22
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17I'm going to use LaVar Burton's answer regarding Nemesis: "Because it sucked."– JeffOct 8, 2011 at 13:59
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2@Jeff reference?– XantecOct 8, 2011 at 14:41
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2@Xantec: trekweb.com/…– JeffOct 8, 2011 at 22:06
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4The story moved on (in the books, non-canon) if you're interested. scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/33/…– Steve JacksonOct 9, 2011 at 17:23
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5@Jeff Indeed, perhaps a better question is "why did they make Star Trek: Nemesis?", other than the obvious want for money.– ApproachingDarknessFishJul 31, 2013 at 5:20
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6 Answers
Part of it was that many of the actors were moving on, part of it was cost as Xantec mentioned. Another factor was that the man driving the Star Trek franchise after Gene died was Rick Berman. By the time Nemesis came out, many fans and critics had grown restless and were saying that Star Trek had become stale and lifeless under Berman's guidance, that it wasn't going boldly anywhere.
Berman was pushing forward for an eleventh film with a group of writers, but they weren't getting very far coming up with an acceptable script. Then, as often happens, the powers that be changed and Paramount got a new president. Their script in progress was shelved indefinitely by the new president. A few months later Rick announced that he was walking away from Star Trek, stating that if Star Trek were ever re-energized, it would be by fresh faces that hadn't been involved before.
Over the years several people proposed reboots of the series that were all rejected by Paramount, including Bryan Singer (who failed to reboot Superman successfully), J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5), Jonathan Frakes (Riker) and William Shatner. They finally got an acceptable proposal for a reboot from JJ Abrams and that brought us to where we are now.
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2Straczynski was never really trying to "reboot" Star Trek; he had his own idea for his own series in a completely different universe. He was also trying to find a studio for Bab 5 before the TNG series even ended. However, his pitching of Bab 5 to Paramount laid the foundation for the similar but Trekified series, Deep Space 9. It had many similar elements; a station out in relatively neutral but contested territory, a gathering place for several different factions, an ancient race bent on destruction/domination...– KeithSOct 11, 2011 at 22:49
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8They refused to let Frakes and Shatner try, but choose Abrams instead?! Well, there goes my hope to see anything like TNG or the movies (up to 9) ever again...– BobbyDec 13, 2012 at 19:53
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6@KeithS, JMS did write up a pitch for a new Trek series. bztv.typepad.com/newsviews/files/ST2004Reboot.pdf Dec 14, 2012 at 16:39
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2They shoulda let Frakes at the wheel. He's phenomenal as a director. May 13, 2014 at 20:14
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Honestly, there's never going to be a live-action film resolution of B4 - the whole reason Brent Spiner wanted to leave the show is that he felt he was growing too visibly aged to continue playing a character that wasn't supposed to age (who looks like he did in the mid-80s).
The entire series has been suffering for a while from a lack of new ideas, and it will likely never live up to the expectations of fans.
DS9 and Voyager aren't really suited to feature-length movies (Voyager especially, since it has canonically finished it's journey), and Enterprise was a disappointment to the studio (not to mention many fans), so it's low on the list for a live-action movie.
In short, the studios won't do it because there's no money in it. And the direction they seem to be heading is for the sure-thing: retreading TOS with the reboot series.
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3A DS9 where Sisko returns from the temple could be interesting - not sure what would have to cause that to happen though.– HorusKolOct 9, 2011 at 21:50
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2Sisko did say he'd be back! But, then again, Kirk and Spock also promised more of Gary 7 and Teri Garr. Mar 17, 2012 at 6:22
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2There's no inherent reason that a Voyager movie couldn't be a feature-length "previously untold adventure", somewhere in the middle of the ship's journey. Whether or not there's any money in it is, as you say, probably the real concern.– jscsDec 10, 2014 at 19:51
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3@JoshCaswell: there's a darn good reason, actually: by placing the movie somewhere within the run of the show, even if it were within the since-erased 'Year of Hell', the movie would be extremely limited in what it could do. The cast couldn't notably grow or change, no main cast could die, the ship couldn't be put in significant danger...there would be no credible danger to the important cast, so any drama would be much harder to achieve. If they were going to go for solid acting and plot to drive the movie, they'd have to pick something other than Voyager. Chakotay and Neelix prove that.– JeffDec 13, 2014 at 2:54
After fifteen years of working on Star Trek (1987 - 2002) it is likely that (A) the actors were ready to move on and (B) it was becoming very expensive to hire the actors. Not to mention that Star Trek Nemesis came out about mid-way through Star Trek Enterprise, arguably during the waning years of the second Star Trek Era (Voyager had just ended, Enterprise wasn't doing so hot and people were pretty much Trekked out).
Mainly because the opinion of most Star Trek fans I know (including myself), Insurrection and Nemesis were bad movies and ended up being financial flops.
Look to The Numbers or Box Office Mojo for specific numbers and poor reviews of both films.
I blame the budget that Paramount gave Next Generation to work with. If Paramount would have given them the same as the re-boot from JJ Abrams, they could have made better movies.
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3I consider this a valid answer, but you should flesh it out with dollar amount comparisons, even a link as evidence that they're correct.– John OMar 12, 2013 at 5:21
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3First Contact only had a budget of $45M and did quite well. And I personally found Into Darkness pretty disappointing despite the huge budget. It just has more mainstream appeal than Nemesis or Insurrection. Jul 30, 2013 at 22:40
I believe that cost and creative issues ended the TNG series of movies. The budget for Star Trek: Nemesis was $67 million. (It earned $67.3 million.) The budget for StarTrek (2009) was $150 million. I suspect a $70 - $75 million budget in the hands of someone like Jonathan Frakes would have done quite well.
