Despite Bob Bakish’s assertions during ViacomCBS’s last earnings call to the contrary, new information has emerged to suggest and prove the house of Trek is far from healthy. A good deal of this information comes from sources that provided the information to Midnight’s Edge, but said information cannot be verified so should be taken with a grain of salt.
Before starting on the latest information let us recap what is already known. According to Bob Bakish, Star Trek: Picard was a resounding success. Bringing in a record number of people to sign up for CBS All Access.
Star Trek as a franchise, he claimed, had never been healthier as the company was fully committed to its development with two new shows already in development and another two plus movies entering development. Faith does not equal green, though.
So right after revealing this information Bakish then announced they had lost $258 million in the fourth quarter. Each share would be paid out only 42 cents, which were down from the $1.44 from the previous year. Unsurprisingly the stock price proceeded to plummet from S35.67 a share down to $21.57 as of this writing.
Midnight’s Edge’s sources indicated that not all was as well as Bakish wanted investors to believe. Amazon, when they picked up Picard following Netflix’s decision to not carry the show internationally, had one important prerequisite: They did not want the show to feature any of the political derision that had caused Star Trek: Discovery to be a net loss for Netflix. To their irritation, the show’s creator and stars before airing began talking in-depth about how the show was anti-Trump and Brexit. How Trump voters need not tune in.
Making matters worse is viewership is reported to be in free fall. A claim we can verify thanks to data analysis firm Numeris who has reported the show has lost on average 108,000 viewers per episode, losing a total of 542,000 viewers as of Episode 5 for Canadian audiences. Numbers are reportedly, so bad if they don’t improve Amazon may consider pulling out of their contract, terminating season 2. Alternatively, some have speculated Amazon may pay for season 2, but will pay significantly less than they did for the original season. A price that was already down from what they wanted from Netflix.
As for Discovery’s announced seasons 4 and 5 they are now reported to be canceled following the lengthy arbitration between Secret Hideout and Netflix. Previously when Netflix wanted out of the Star Trek business, Secret Hideout threatened to sue them for $400 million after Kurtzman went on a crazy spending spree they claimed Netflix agreed to.
Arbitration concluded that Netflix had not signed off on Kurtzman’s insane spending spree and after losing money on the venture combined with being threatened with a massive lawsuit Netflix has terminated its contract for Discovery. Currently, the harebrained scheme of executives at ViacomCBS is to announce the show’s conclusion near the release of the final episode. Claiming despite announcing and boasting about two more seasons the show was only meant to be three seasons long.
Worse for ViacomCBS is McFarlane Toys (aka the only company willing to continue to deal in Star Trek merchandise) has now ended their contract. Going forward they will no longer be making Trek toys as even the classic designs they were making were not selling. All other companies have outright refused to touch Alternative Universe Trek merchandise as they reportedly “cannot even give the stuff away”.
Going forward it is likely Amazon is going to bail on Picard. Get Woke, Go Broke is becoming so well known the media has taken to complaining about the phrase itself, meaning investors sure as hell know about it at this juncture. Couple that with the Boris administration completing Brexit and Republicans looking to make a landslide victory in the 2020 elections, it is unlikely Amazon will continue holding the damaged goods as Washington starts to look for reprisals for the nearly four years of out of control censorship major tech companies have engaged in.
It is no secret that ViacomCBS want Kurtzman gone, but contractual obligation makes it difficult to remove him from the company. Unfortunately for everyone involve Kurtzman will continue to have his hands all over Star Trek until 2023, by which point the IP won’t be worth keeping around.