Here’s something I bet you didn’t know. Back in 1979 and 1982, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan broke the opening weekend record with $11.9 million and $14.3 million respectively. So, yes, for a brief period, the Star Trek franchise really was in the same kind of company as Batman and Jurassic Park.

The above quote is from my weekend box office report from four summers ago, when Star Trek debuted with a whopping $79.5 million in 3.25 days and seemingly restarted a grand old franchise.  Back then, everybody presumed that Paramount’s kick-ass marketing team had pulled off a coup, rebooting the seemingly creaky Star Trek franchise in a big-budget action-adventure designed to appeal both to Trekkies and non-Trekkies alike.  The film had solid legs due to strong word-of-mouth, earning $257 million domestic and, even when adjusted for inflation, becoming the most successful Star Trek film ever released.  Yeah, the film under-performed overseas ($128 million foreign) and arguably cost too much ($150-$200 million, depending on who you ask), but Paramount was playing long-ball.  They had their Batman Begins, now it was a matter of waiting for the cash-in of their Dark Knight/Dead Man’s Chest. It was pretty much accepted fact that the theoretical Star Trek 2  was going to be an absolute box office monster.  With a $84 million four-day gross that is just 6% higher than the original’s $79.5 million 3.25 day gross, it was not to be.

Star Trek used to be very much at or near the top of the short-term box office heap. And, if history is any indication, it’ll return again when Star Trek II: Attack of the Klingons is released in summer 2012.

I’m quoting from my old report to provide some context in terms of how a seemingly pretty large weekend debut can be judged as a genuine disappointment.  Star Trek Into Darkness was not the X2: X-Men United of the franchise, even though both films shamelessly steal from the same Star Trek sequel. Putting aside Paramount’s inexplicable decision to open the film on Thursday, and to do so at the very last minute with minimal notice of this fact, the 4.25 day debut for Star Trek Into Darkness is “just” $84 million, with a “mere” $70.5 million Fri-Sun debut (a rather large $13.5 million of that was in IMAX alone, accounting for 16% of the weekend).  The first Star Trek earned $79.5 million in its first 3.25 days, a number that would be about $84 million adjusted for inflation and around $95 million when accounting for this film’s 3D bump.  There is no way around it, Star Trek Into Darkness pulled in fewer ticket buyers than the 2009 Star Trek. For the record, I do not want to scream “FLOP” over a $82 million four-day gross and potentially lucrative overseas final results, but this is indeed a case where a rather large opening can be considered a ‘disappointment’ in relation to realistic expectations and/or budgetary demands. Four years ago, we all thought that Star Trek 2 was a lock for one of the bigger opening weekends on record.  Today, we’re wondering if it will even top $200 million domestic.

Like past ‘better than I expected’ first films (Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery, X-Men, The Bourne Identity, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, Batman Begins, and Casino Royale), the inevitable sequel could nearly double this film’s opening weekend take. Right here, right now, I’m calling $100 million+ for the opening weekend of the second Star Trek 2.0 picture.

Now there is precedent for sequels with surprisingly small debuts doing ‘okay’ in the long run.  Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, which this film feels similar to in terms of marketing and reception (“More of the same, but harder, faster, and with a quirky British character actor as a one-man killing machine!”), opened with just $40 million in December 2011, compared to the $62 million Christmas 2009 debut of the first Sherlock Holmes.  But while the sequel’s $186 million domestic gross was less than the first film’s $209 million, overseas picked up the slack and it beat the first film’s global gross $545 million to $525 million. Shrek: The Final Chapteropened with just $71 million over this weekend in 2010, a stunning drop fromShrek the Third‘s $122 million debut over this same weekend in 2007.  But the film was surprisingly leggy, admittedly back when 3D was still a novelty and 3D films were able to keep prime auditoriums for longer, and made its way to $232 million domestic and a whopping $752 million worldwide.

But mere survival was not Paramount’s goal with this second go-around.  Star Trek was supposed to be their crown jewel and they spent a lot of money over the last several years to ‘make it so’. Paramount has few franchises, and certainly no others on this level outside of Transformers, so breaking even is not the goal here. They played long-ball but may have fumbled right at the ten-yard line. As for ‘Why didn’t the sequel break out?’, it’s quite possible that J.J. Abrams ‘mystery box’ shares some of the blame.  Frankly the second film took so long to actually go into production, with several false starts, that I’m not sure J.J. Abrams and company wanted to do another one in the first place.  This would arguably explain the reliance on the crutch that is their choice of villain, a painfully uninspired choice made doubly-odd by Abrams’s refusal to confirm his identity in the marketing.  In short, why pick a villain purely because he is recognizable to more general audience Star Trek fans and then hide his presence in the marketing? Of course, this ‘mystery’ could arguably only work because they took a character originally played by an ethnic actor and cast the whitest white guy they could find, but that’s a topic forRacebending.

Abrams stressed that the film was full of massive secrets that couldn’t be spoiled, which was untrue (if you know movies and movie cliches, the film is very predictable) and left Paramount with only generic action cliches and context-free moments of visual splendor to sell.  If the idea of the director lording over a marketing campaign, overruling the studio marketing executives, and producing a less than expected financial result sounds familiar, it’s pretty much, on a far more damaging scale, what happened withJohn Carter last year. Marvel had the right plan with Iron Man 3, giving away enough to get viewers interested but actually having a genuine bunny or two in your hat worth hiding.  Of course, attempts to pull in stereo-typically female moviegoers was kneecapped by the surprisingly robust performance of The Great Gatsby last weekend. For what it’s worth, the film played 45% 3D, which includes that 16% IMAX figure.

The other, more troubling possibility for the franchise is that perhaps Star Trek was a fluke.  Maybe the rebooted origin story didn’t turn Star Trek into a massively mainstream franchise in America, but was rather a one-off that successfully connected with Trekkies and general audiences in a manner similar to the periodic and temporary franchise upswings (think Star Trek: First Contact or Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home).  Overseas may yet tell a different tale (it’s at around $164 million worldwide after opening in most markets over the last two weekends), but it needs to massively outplay Star Trek‘s $128 million foreign take to turn this into a genuine blockbuster. If it plays identical to Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, or 2.8x its four-day Thurs-Sun opening, it ends up with $235 million domestic, which is clearly the best case scenario. If it plays like Revenge of the Sith, it ends up with $203 million. If it plays like The Matrix Reloaded, it earns $178 million.

So there is lots of wiggle room, and it’s probably playing great with general audiences who aren’t howling in protest at the very elements that were meant to condescendingly call back to the films Trekkies love most (it’s actually a better film than Star Trek until its final two reels).  If it ends up at or below $180 million, it ends up smack-dab in the middle of the Star Trek franchise in terms of inflation-adjusted grosses.  What this probable over/under $200 million result means is that this new Star Trek franchise has come back down to Earth and will now play like a normal Star Trek film, with the obvious boost in inflation-adjusted grosses, 3D ticket-price bumps, and current blockbuster budgets. Best case scenario, Star Trek Into Darkness makes it to $235 million and triples its prior overseas numbers for a $620 million worldwide total.  Worst case scenario, the film crawls to $175 million domestic and barely improves on its predecessor overseas, giving it an under-$400 million worldwide take.  We’ll know when we’ll know, but considering the sheer amount of competition over the next two weeks and the soon-to-go away IMAX screens, we cannot be expecting the kind of legs the first film displayed.

The likely end result of this genuinely disappointing debut and probably disappointing final gross is that Paramount will clean house as much as they can for the third Star Trek film.  J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot production company still ‘first look’ rights until 2015, so a complete purge is not going to happen.  Come what may, 2016 is Star Trek‘s 50th anniversary, so Paramount till be damn sure to have a new film in theaters by then. Abrams will be busy with Star Wars Episode VII so expect someone along the lines of Drew Goddard or Matt Reeves (both strong choices I’d argue) to step into the chair this time around.  If they can get away with it, Star Trek 3 will be cheaper than Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness, which will allow a $450-$650 million worldwide take to be massively profitable.

I’ll make the rest of the box office news brief. Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha opened well, with $135,000 on four screens, for a robust 33,750 per-screen average. Iron Man 3 passed $300 million domestic and $1 billion worldwide last Thursday (it’s currently at $1.07 billion), so it’s all gravy from this point forward. It earned $35 million domestic this weekend, down 51%, for a current cume of $337 million, surpassing Spider-Man 3 to enter the top-25 all-time domestic grossers .The Great Gatsby dropped 53% this weekend, earning another $23.4 million and bringing its cume to $90.2 million.  So far, so good old sport.  and Fast and Furious 6 debuted in the UK and Ireland this weekend in advance of its domestic roll-out next Friday (seeing it tomorrow), and picked up a solid $13.8 million for its troubles.

Read more: Forbes