Question regarding two long time franchises

Bond was an anachronism by the late '60s. Shoot him.

Sorry, I meant Tarantino in my question. I guess I should take some spelling lessons.

They'd never do it as a period piece, cuz the mallplex audience wouldn't get it.

Would the Star Trek movies have "performed" at all without the TV casts' familiarity?

I think the Trek movies depended on the audience's familiarity with the cast for their success. That's why I think its boneheaded to try what they're doing. The franchise is hurting financially with the established crew (at least as far as the last film is concerned) so it makes no sense to get rid of them (though I've read that many of them, especially Patrick Stewart, are getting pretty bored with their roles). The theory I have is that Paramount figures that there's a trekkie constituency that will go see whatever they release. Therefore, the less money they spend on the film through stars and effects, the more they'll make back. I think this is what guided their decision with the last film (which I did not see). My friend told me that it looked cheap and as if it were shot on like three sets. So now the idea must be to get rid of the somewhat pricy established stars and pay a bunch of nobodies scale, based on the theory that trekkies will see anything. Slopping their fanbase, seems to me like a really bad idea. As far as Bond goes, I understand their logic even less. The Brosan films have been hugely successful, each making more than the last. Brosnan doesn't really have an A-list viable film career outside the series so it can't be that he has time or high salary demands. It seems to me again that the producers figure that its the franchise that sells and not the star and they can pay the guy who's playing Dr. Doom in the FF4 this summer or the guy from Nip/Tuck like 3 million bucks and people will come anyway. Aren't they forgetting about the disaster of Timothy Dalton?

the thinking with the star trek film is extremeley dumb. they already tried and failed with Enterprise to have a story set in the Trek universe with no real connections to the known characters or actors. They'd better have a fucking ace Sci-Fi script that relies on absolutely NO Trek elements and just have it incidentally refer to some Trek things in an off-hand manner.

Bond: beats me why they don't want to pay Brosnan. But there is still life in that character. Bond is nothing but elaborate set : tuxedo : music anyway.

Trek will be dead before Bond, who is a character that can be plugged into any number of action films. Just get the right actor and the series will keep trucking.

The current crop of Star Trek movies depend on the familiarity with the TV shows. "Next Generation" was a huge success with people other than Trekkies, "Deep Space Nine" was a success only with Trekkies, and "Enterprise" seems to have flopped across the board.

Bah, DS9 was the only one I got any pleasure out of. But admittedly I only watched it because I was dating a Trekkie at the time. It would be difficult to convince me to do that again.

What financial incentive would there be to ever kill off any franchise?
Tax write-offs?
I could see ST fans paying good money to euthanize the series.
Any takers?