Jan 12 2009
Does Star Trek only work for Paramount at tax time?
I have for many years suspected something about Paramount’s relationship to Star Trek. Paramount pictures is a notoriously stingy studio, almost all the lawsuits you have heard of over the last 20 years that dealt with writer’s suing a studio for their fairly contracted share of the profits were directed at Paramount Pictures - The most notorious of which was the case involving “Beverly Hills Cop”.
Paramount actually fired some of its own executives over how much money Spielberg and Lucas individually got from the success of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.
Since Star Trek has always seemed to be a struggling franchise - TMP didn’t exactly invite a sequel, Trek v was a bomb, Generations was poorly received, Insurrection was panned and made less than Generations, Nemesis was not only an outright bomb - it was hated by fans and critics alike.
On top of that, you’ve got the struggles on TV - DS9 losing the attention of the casual TV viewer quite early on, Voyager was threatened with cancellation on several occasions - to the point where they brought a chic with big tits on the show to try and drum up some ratings, Enterprise was panned right away and threatened with cancellation, until it unceremoniously eventually was.
Even the licensed comic book versions don’t run for very long.
So, you kinda need to ask yourself - Why do they keep this going if they are constantly placed in financial jeopardy by the franchise?
Sweep away the “for the fans” romanticism, and you are left with one answer - The annual tax write-off.
One surefire way for a film studio to counter balance the amount of profit money they are taxed on annually, is to have a certain amount of non-performing product - Movies and shows that incur them huge losses. Those losses, operational costs, are placed against the money they would have been taxed for all they profit they made, and more often than not, the amounts cancel each other out, leaving the studio with very little owing to the IRS annually.
So, my thought or question to you folks is - Do you think the Star Trek franchise has been perpetuated by the studio, despite all of its financial failures and constant critical bashing, because Trek has always been a reliable source for Paramount’s annual tax write-offs? A guaranteed, sure-fire way for the studio to retain its profit come tax time
