With Star Trek Beyond failing to hit warp speed and Zoolander 2 and Ben-Hur bonafide box office bombs, Paramount racked up one of its biggest losses last year.

The $455m (£365m) loss, the worst in the 12 years Paramount Pictures had been run by Brad Grey, prompted parent Viacom to make a change at the top and pledge to bring the studio behind Titanic, Braveheart and The Godfather back to its former glory.



The minnow of the “big six” Hollywood studios has turned to the former chief of Rupert Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox, Jim Gianopulos, whose releases include Fox’s biggest-ever hit Avatar and the X-Men series, to learn the lessons of its rivals and bring back the box office mojo.



Just six years ago, Paramount was the most successful studio group dominating rivals with blockbusters including Transformers and Mission: Impossible, and hitting home runs with micro-budget films such as Paranormal Activity.



In 2011, its film revenues were almost $6bn. Last year, they came in at just $2.66bn, cementing Paramount’s place as the minnow of the big six Hollywood studios for the fifth year running.



“It’s like Disney in reverse,” said Brian Wieser, senior research analyst at Pivotal.

The runaway success of Disney, which became the first studio to break $7bn at the global box office in a year in 2016, has provided something of a template for success in the studio business.



Paramount’s biggest film last year was Star Trek Beyond which brought in $343m globally, lukewarm compared with the $500m its predecessor managed, and a minnow in the blockbuster stakes.

Finding Dory: hit Disney franchise. Photograph: Disney/Pixar

By comparison, Disney’s production line rolled out a slew of $1bn-plus-grossing films across a breadth of genres including Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Captain America: Civil War and Finding Dory.

Paramount also struck out with fare including Zoolander 2 and Ben-Hur, considered to be the biggest flop of 2016, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise is running out of steam, last year’s offering managed half what the first film earned.

“The recipe for studios in recent years has been to scale back and make fewer films by defining successful franchises and bludgeoning the way to the top of the charts,” said Richard Broughton, of media research firm Ampere.

“That has been the big issue at Paramount which has a mediocre set of franchises. The reduction in output of films has led to a reluctance to take risks. That has to be reversed to create a successful studio if you are stuck in a rut of making average films. That takes guts.”



To be fair to Paramount, it has struggled in recent years at least in part because parent Viacom, owner of MTV and Comedy Central, has focused on returning capital to shareholders instead of investing in the film unit.

Disney has spent $15bn building a multi-genre hit machine, buying Finding Nemo and Toy Story creator Pixar, Marvel Comics’ sprawling superhero universe and Lucasfilm, maker of Star Wars and Indiana Jones.



Paramount, which used to distribute films for Marvel and Dreamworks, never got off the start line when they were sold.



However, buying success through acquisitions is not the only way to get to build a competitive film studio.



Minions: massive success for Universal. Photograph: Universal Pictures/Sportsphoto/Allstar

Universal, which topped the industry in 2015 taking almost $7bn at the box office, has developed a string of franchises in-house including Fast and Furious, Jurassic Park, Despicable Me and spin-off Minions.



“It is about shrewd intellectual property licences too,” said Broughton. “Can Paramount, or any studio, find un-utilised IP out there. There is probably a gold mine or two that has been over-looked or yet to be discovered. Look at the more recent success of teen/young adult books converting rapidly into new titles, such as Hunger Games and Maze Runner.”

Bob Bakish, who was promoted to chief executive of Viacom in December, recently outlined a Disney-esque plan to drive Paramount up the movie charts.

It includes exploring spin-offs in the Transformer franchise – this year’s Transformers: The Last Knight will bring in $1bn-plus if it performs like its predecessors – as well as films based on Hasbro toys.

He also wants the film operation to work more closely with the TV business: a channel is being rebranded The Paramount Network, and four feature films are being developed with Nickelodeon. The first, Amusement Park, is expected to be released next summer.

Paramount has also said it will build a family film division; it hasn’t had a winner in the hugely lucrative kids’ market since it distributed 2012’s $750m-grossing Madagascar.

Viacom, which explored selling a minority stake in Paramount last year only to abandon the process in a change of heart over its future value to the conglomerate, has said that the studio’s problems are “executional”, not terminal. “It’s not curing cancer,” said Bakish recently.



“Whether Paramount’s lack of success and growth has been by design, ill fortune or incompetence it is hard to know from the outside,” said Wieser. “To be successful you want a bunch of tentpole films that you can rinse, repeat and cycle through again. The downside of making movies is that it still requires throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks.”



Paramount’s flops

Ben-Hur



Ben-Hur: lost an estimated $120m. Photograph: Allstar/Paramount Pictures

The biggest flop of 2016, racking up an estimated loss of $120m. With a budget of $100m and a huge marketing budget the global box office take of just over $90m was dismal. Paramount distributed the film, it was co-produced with MGM, and has an estimated 20% stake in the movie.

Zoolander 2

Derek Zoolander and friends failed to strut their stuff a second time in a sequel that was demolished by critics. A $50m budget, not including marketing, for a $56m global take meant Hansel is certainly not hot right now.

Allied

Brad Pitt and Marion Cottilard in Allied. Photograph: Allstar/Paramount Pictures

Featuring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard, and directed by Robert Zemeckis, this second world war spy adventure should have been a winner. It cost at least $85m to make, before marketing, and is estimated to have lost $75m to $90m for Paramount. It wasn’t helped by Pitt curtailing publicity because of his divorce from Angelina Jolie.

Star Trek Beyond

The blockbuster that wasn’t. On the face of it, the $343m global box office take for the latest instalment of the revitalised franchise doesn’t seem too bad. Except that is well down on the $500m its predecessor took, and with a production budget of $185m and marketing estimated at $120m it barely washed its face. So not a bomb, but not the banker it was expected to be.

And the ‘surprise’ hit

Arrival

Amy Adams in Arrival. Photograph: Jan Thijs/Paramount Pictures

Hailed as an instant sci-fi classic, it is the runaway success of the relatively smaller budget ($47m) Arrival that harks back to Paramount’s roots. Starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner and directed by Denis Villeneuve, who is working on the next Blade Runner movie with Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford, Arrival took $200m worldwide.