Update: LucasFilm denies report | Report: Future Star Wars standalone movies on hold at LucasFilm

[thismeintiel]

NightlyPoe said:

Ganoncrotch said:

The only real change so to the star wars stand alone movies after this one will be that their budgets will be even stricter again as they'll have to take into account the potentially low sales of a movie about some of the more abstract background characters from the original or even prequel trilogies. Not that a strict budget is always a bad thing, one of the cheapest made Star Trek films ever was Wrath of Khan because there was no faith in the series after the Motion picture bombed so hard... think still hard to name many Trek movies better than Khan.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture didn't bomb at all.  In fact, it was a big hit.  To this day, when adjusted for inflation, it's the second highest grossing Star Trek movie and only Star Trek IV and Star Trek: First Contact did better than it for the entirety of the ten Shatner and Stewart-led movies.  Not bad considering that the movie itself was a mess.  The budget did get out of control though, no doubt about that.  It cost like twice as much as The Empire Strikes Back a year later, which is just nutty.  And all they got for their money were a few ridiculously slow scenes that only Star Trek model builders could love.

Thank goodness it didn't bomb, or that franchise would have never have never reached the peaks it did by the 90s.

That movie did bomb. It had a $35M budget, meaning that it needed to make ~$70M to break even. It made $82.26M. But, that's just the production budget, it doesn't include the advertising budget. Granted, those budgets weren't as big as they are, now, but I still think at the most optimistic estimate, it probably just broke even. Decent home video sales and fan demand are probably why they greenlit a sequel. They just made sure to keep the budget in check this time.