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I was just looking at the budgets and revenues for the Star Trek movies on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Trek_films

I can't believe Nemesis lost to Insurrection.

I loved Nemesis but I thought Insurrection was rather mediocre.

Guess I was in the minority, but why?!

There were as many holes in NEM as in INS, but the generality that comes into play is as follows: if film "A" is of substandard quality, that fact will not affect the initial take of film "A" - people will still at first need to see it to tell it's not so good. However, that will have a concrete effect on the sequel, as people will remember the issues of film "A."

In like manner, if the prequel to "A" is good, it will help produce a decent initial take for "A."

People were pretty burnt out on 'Trek at that point, with the mediocrity of Insurrection, and the "screw you, canon" of Enterprise. At least, that's my take on it.

TMP had a budget of $46 million!? Where'd all that money go? Shatner's hairpiece?

I preferred Nemesis over Insurrection as well, but I belive that Tsuki and Mikey have hit on target:

Insurrection was bad, so the Non-Trek moviegoers probably weren't insterested in Nemesis, fearing it was the same, and the Trek Fans were just starting to lose faith I guess...

Tsukiyumi wrote:TMP had a budget of $46 million!? Where'd all that money go? Shatner's hairpiece?

TMP's SFX were exceptional, especially for the time. The plot may have been pretty "meh", but the look, with the refit-Connie, V'Ger, the wormhole scene, etc, was very impressive.

LaughingCheese wrote:I can't believe Nemesis lost to Insurrection.

Guess I was in the minority, but why?!

As well as the reasons others have pointed out, Nemesis was also up against Star Wars (AotC) and Lord of the Rings (The Two Towers ).

Captain Seafort wrote:TMP's SFX were exceptional, especially for the time. The plot may have been pretty "meh", but the look, with the refit-Connie, V'Ger, the wormhole scene, etc, was very impressive.

Very true. Remember, there was no relatively-cheap CGI - all those FX were models, lighting, and green-screen.

That's just reminded me of something I read about Escape from New York a couple of days ago when it was on tv. There was a scene where a computer displayed a 3-d wire frame model of the City, but computers capable of generating an image like that were to expensive. The FX team instead built a model of the city, painted it black, and attached bright white tape to it, then flew a camera through the model.

Wow. And now, my screensaver can do that.

What screen saver is that?

Oh, it probably didn't help that Nemesis would have been an awful as just a TV episode. As a movie it sucked harder than Cygnus X-1

Tyyr wrote:What screen saver is that?

Well, there's Beziers, or Mystify. They both come with Windows.

Tsukiyumi wrote:People were pretty burnt out on 'Trek at that point, with the mediocrity of Insurrection, and the "screw you, canon" of Enterprise. At least, that's my take on it.

TMP had a budget of $46 million!? Where'd all that money go? Shatner's hairpiece?

Part of it was absorbing the cost of the aborted Phase II project. The special effects where also excellent for the time (still are), they really had to up the ante to stand next to what SW brought us.

I just found it amusing that TMP cost more than First Contact.

Tsukiyumi wrote:I just found it amusing that TMP cost more than First Contact.

It did? That's just messed up!

Under the OP's link; FC cost $45 million. Only INS, NEM, and the new film cost more than TMP.

That doesn't surprise me. At the time, those effects would have cost a shitload due to the fact that they were so new and advanced.
By the time of FC, the effects they were using weren't all that expensive to use. They weren't new, and as far as the directors were concerned, they didn't need to be.

Adjust those numbers for inflation, and it gets even worse.