LOS ANGELES — For “Star Trek Into Darkness,” the coming $190 million movie from J. J. Abrams, the mission is to boldly go where no Star Trek film has gone before — and get audiences overseas to care.

“Star Trek” may be one of the biggest franchises in Hollywood history, but it has one surprising flaw: Captain Kirk doesn’t travel well. Foreign moviegoers for one reason or another have never fully embraced the swaggering Starfleet captain and his oddball crew. That is a major problem for Paramount Pictures now that international ticket sales account for up to 80 percent of a movie’s total gross.

A 2009 effort to revive the Star Trek movie series was a smash hit in North America, taking in about $280 million, after adjusting for inflation. But box-office analysts were deeply disappointed by the film’s foreign box office total of $139 million.

So Paramount has revved up its engines to warp speed for “Into Darkness,” which is already playing in some countries and will arrive in the United States on May 17. The Viacom-owned studio has increased its international marketing budget for the film by 35 percent over that for the 2009 film, asked stars to do an unusual amount of globetrotting and staggered the release dates to shield “Into Darkness” from competition.