But why did Star Trek: Nemesis take so little at the box office? Well, let’s leave the critical view of the film to one side for the moment, as it was nowhere near as one sided in 2002 as it is now, with hindsight.

Looking at other theatrical releases around the same time, this relatively low-budget film was up against the behemoths of the second Harry Potter (Chamber Of Secrets) and the second of Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings films (The Two Towers). 007 was also kicking around with Die Another Day. It would be fair to say that the competition was tough.

Looking at the budgets and worldwide box office takings, Potter cost $100 million and took $879 million, Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers cost $94 million and took $935 million while 007 cost $142 million and took $432 million.

It’s not hard to come to the conclusion that the film simply got overlooked. After all, Star Trek is a product of the small screen and up against the cinematic experiences on offer from the other films, it’s hardly surprising that cinema-goers may have simply decided to wait to see the film… if they even knew it was out.

With movie theaters desperately trying to get more showings of the other films in each day, it’s no surprise that the number of screens showing Nemesis dropped dramatically, very quickly. Paramount knew all this, though. The decision to go up against The Two Towers was made specifically to catch those who couldn’t get a ticket to the sold out fantasy epic. Indeed the pressure from the studio, and Rick Berman as its representative, was to cut the film’s running time, with the alleged intent to allow it to be shown more times a day per screen compared with Jackson’s film running at 172 minutes. History shows, however, that this strategy didn’t work.