Resistance is futile. The premier of Star Trek Beyond, Justin Lin’s third installment of the successful reboot of this iconic series, is set to hit theaters July 22, and the studio has planned a couple of aficionado activities to promote the opening weekend.
Without this, Star Trek Beyond is already in a better position than 20th Century Fox’s X-Men: Apocalypse, which failed to thrill the audiences with an uncompelling villain and ended up with a 48% on Rotten Tomatoes and a weird friendship between Magneto and Professor X.
All Trekkies must also know that Beyond reached a 91% raw score on the website from 35 reviews. Beam up the hype, Scotty.
The Trekkie-schedule
The biggest event will be the movie’s world premiere on Wednesday night Comic-Con in San Diego, at the Embarcadero Marina Park South, where the hashtag #StarTrekSDCC will potentially spike in the social network.
For others who can’t assist to the world premiere, Paramount is holding a nationwide Star Trek Marathon in select cities, on a one-night-event-only that will feature special screenings of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness, as well as Lin’s threequel. All for the price of a single admission.
So, the movie will play in 3,800 locations, including 391 Imax sites and 37 foreign locations in U.K, Australia, Russia, and Germany.
Each Star Trek Marathon ticket also gives an exclusive Star Trek full-size collector’s poster designed by a Gallery 1988 artist and a Starfleet T-shirt. However, not everything before the premiere is good news, as the death of Anton Yelchin last month, who played young Ensing Pavel Chekov, still weights on its co-stars.
When the cast and crew gathered last month in Los Angeles for Yenchi’s funeral, they took the decision to keep promoting the movie in the wake of the loss of their beloved colleague. Last year, the franchise suffered another significant loss with the passing of actor Leonard Nimoy, the original Mr. Spock.
The Plot
This is everything that you need to know: Krall, played by Idris Elba, is the name of the main antagonist. Hundreds of little vessels swarm the USS Enterprise in an epic battle that surpasses Captain Kirk, and the crew finds an alien race while marooned on a stranded planet and fights for survival against their new and mysterious enemy.
Anything else could be a spoiler, but, have you seen the trailer yet?
50 years of Star Trek
2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the franchise, and the new film, fitting to such a celebration, is the 13th feature movie in the series.
After half a century of interstellar traveling alongside the USS Enterprise, we know that the new release cost $185 million. In 1979, the first one had a loss of $46 million.
The franchise has survived their five decades journey and sprawled four major TV spinoff series. There has also been novels, comic books, video games, an animated series and plenty of references rooted in pop culture. Much of its success comes from Leonard Nimoy’s character, Mr. Spock, a half-human half-alien who is from the planet Vulcan.
Nimoy did appear in J.J. Abraham’s sort of reboot, “Star Trek”, a film that erases all previous installments when a Romulan ship travels to the past and takes revenge on Captain George Kirk, thus rewriting the universe timeline.
A brand new Star Trek series will also emerge from CBS studios and will be aired in 188 countries by Netflix, after its debut on the CBS streaming service. The production will reportedly start in January 2017.
Not much is known yet, only that Alex Kurtzman, writer of Star Trek and Into Darkness, is in charge of the script.
Live long and prosper, fans
Even before the opening date of Beyond, the future of the franchise is already promising.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Thor, better-known as Chris Hemsworth, is supposedly appearing in the fourth installment as Captain Kirk’s father, George Kirk, the man whose legacy burdened the protagonist throughout the movie franchise. In 2009, the Australian actor already made a brief cameo in the reboot.
Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, John Cho and Zoe Saldana are also set to return, while J.J. Abrams and Lindsey Weber will handle production, and the director chair of the future is still empty.
Star Trek’s box office
Illumination/Uni’s ton The Secret Life of Pets will likely fall 50% in its third weekend, while 20th Century Fox/Bue Sky’s Ice Age: Collision Course is opening in theaters to get an estimated of $35 million on its first weekend. Meanwhile, Sony/Village Roadshow’s Ghostbusters might decline by 50%.
James Wan’s horror film Lights Out, by New Line Cinema and Warner Bros, will also be peeking in San Diego’s Comic-Con over the weekend. Critics are expecting this $5 million production to gain over 13$ million on its release, on a year where Wan’s The Conjuring 2 was already successful and The Purge: Election Year hit yet another high mark for the genre.
Source: Deadline