At the time, Cinefantastique related that between Shatner's, Leonard Nimoy's, and DeForrest Kelly's $6 million fees, there was precious little for anything approximating special effects or anything else. A very telling point was that Shatner was offered either a straight $1 million directorial fee (along with the promise that he was able to direct the next two films, solely so he could direct one more than Nimoy had) or a percentage of the profits, and he ran like hell. When I finally saw it, I wasn't surprised in the slightest: I've seen student films that weren't that murky, so I suspect that Paramount was even cutting costs on film stock.
(A funny little aside on that: 1989 was also the summer that Paramount management attempted to beat down the dollar cinema market and lost, and Star Trek V was at the center of it. At the time, licensing payments to studios from dollar cinemas usually ran about 60 cents on the dollar per ticket, and Paramount announced that it expected 95 cents per ticket. Since that wiped out any available profit, especially for some of the dogs Paramount was trying to sell that summer, the big chains such as Cinemark announced that they simply weren't going to run Paramount movies until such a time as the licensing rate went down. Paramount management threw a snit and promptly rereleased Star Trek V and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as a double feature, and watched them both tank in rerelease. Very quietly, Paramount changed its stance, and there was joy in Mudville when the studio made back some of the money it had pissed down the rathole for "Bill and Harve's Bogus Journey".)
Elvis help me, that brought back some nasty flashbacks from that time. I've tried my best to burn out all of that unnecessary trivia, I really have, but I guess the wood burning kit just wasn't enough...
Re: <i>Star Trek V</i>
(A funny little aside on that: 1989 was also the summer that Paramount management attempted to beat down the dollar cinema market and lost, and Star Trek V was at the center of it. At the time, licensing payments to studios from dollar cinemas usually ran about 60 cents on the dollar per ticket, and Paramount announced that it expected 95 cents per ticket. Since that wiped out any available profit, especially for some of the dogs Paramount was trying to sell that summer, the big chains such as Cinemark announced that they simply weren't going to run Paramount movies until such a time as the licensing rate went down. Paramount management threw a snit and promptly rereleased Star Trek V and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as a double feature, and watched them both tank in rerelease. Very quietly, Paramount changed its stance, and there was joy in Mudville when the studio made back some of the money it had pissed down the rathole for "Bill and Harve's Bogus Journey".)
Elvis help me, that brought back some nasty flashbacks from that time. I've tried my best to burn out all of that unnecessary trivia, I really have, but I guess the wood burning kit just wasn't enough...