Tuesday, May 7, 2019

CBS Starts Star Trek Global Brand Franchise Group

CBS Television Studios has announced they have tapped EVP Veronica Hart to head the newly created Star Trek Global Franchise Management. The group will be based at Alex Kurtzman's Secret Hideout Productions HQ in Santa Monica. The purpose of the group is in the name. The goal is to expand Star Trek worldwide in all the ways it has already spread in the States and some EU countries so not just television but merchandising, brand awareness, conventions, video games, pod casts, and so on. The choice in location is likely because the soon to five different Star Trek series that will be on the air in a year or two is be driven from Secret Hideout with Kurtzman an executive producer on all of them.

From a Trekkie perspective, this news is kind is a factoid but doesn't change things much for us. From a corporate and Hollywood perspective its sending the signal that CBS is planning to make serious efforts to expand the brand worldwide, something its only made a token effort to do in the past. Most of the worldwide recognition of the brand has been due to streaming, re-runs and the like but not because CBS but any real effort or people behind the attempt instead choosing to let Paramount Pictures attempt that effort via the marketing for the movies.

Which is where the potential real upside comes in - the movies. The more popular the franchise becomes internationally, the more likely new movies will be made. Keep in mind that (for now) the Star Trek franchise is owned by two corporations that are siblings but not under one roof. The movie side is owned by Paramount Pictures and the TV side by CBS. For reason I am unable to fathom, Paramount effectively blocked CBS from creating new TV series while they kept promising to do new movies but waiting many years between them. However after the third movie barely broke even (if that) and continued to fail to find an international audience, Paramount has made it clear they are not terribly interested in Star Trek movies unless it can be done cheap, which is unlikely for various reasons. Probably didn't hurt that there kept being merger talks between the two companies. Any case this opened the door for CBS to drive through and they basically chose to tear the door off.

Movie making is no longer about the US anymore. Just look at Avengers: Endgame. It has done spectacularly worldwide becoming #2 on the all time box office list in just 10 days with over $2 billion in revenue. Of that 70% came internationally. The 30% US/ 70% internationally has now become standard for any successful film (really start looking up recent tentpole movies, its amazing how close they all hit that ratio). For comparison the split for Star Trek Beyond was 53% US and 46% internationally and this was with Paramount spending a great deal of money and effort to try to get new territories such as China to become aware of the franchise. That failure to gain traction internationally despite that effort is likely the main reason Paramount held the line on recent actor salary demands. It literally wasn't worth it to them without those international dollars.

I hope this group will signal two things - 1) the television side of Star Trek is no longer taking a backseat to the movie side, especially when Paramount refuses to make decisive decisions and 2) it truly expands the popularity of Star Trek worldwide one season at a time.

No comments:

Post a Comment