All 13 Star Trek movies officially ranked

Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan

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Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

Production Budget: $12,000,000
Worldwide Box office: $95,800,000
Total Profit: $83,800,000
Return on Investment: 698.3%

Is it any surprise that Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan ranks number one on this lis? With both the lowest budget and most personal connection to Star Trek fan it tends to top most best of lists, and it’s easy to see why it would also have given the best return on investment of any movie in the franchise.

When Gene Roddenberry was forced to step down into a creative consultant role, his replacement on the franchise Harve Bennett began combing through the Original Series episodes, having decided that the major issue with Star Trek: The Motion Picture had been that it lacked a solid villain, he ended up going way back to Star Trek season one, episode twenty-four Space Seed when the Enterprise came across a ship floating along in space giving off an ancient signal, what followed was a strong episode where a tyrannical superhuman from Earth’s distant past would attempt to gain control of the Enterprise and begin amassing his own power to conquer anything and anyone who stood in his way.

Khan would be the perfect villain, and over the next few drafts of the story, then titled Star Trek II: The Undiscovered Country Khan was the main villain, the title eventually changed and the weapon of mass destruction known as The Omega System would be renamed Genesis, but the villain remained the same.

As much as Spock’s death is a milestone moment in Star Trek history it almost never happened, Leonard Nimoy had long said he had no interest in doing a second Star Trek movie, it was only the promise of the character’s death, an even no actor can turn down, in the first third of the movie that convinced him to come back for another run. The death scene was pushed back in each subsequent script and eventually became the dramatic ending of the movie. Leonard Nimoy was eventually swayed by the excitement surrounding the second movie and reconsidered his decision to leave the character behind, he struck a deal to return as long as he was allowed to direct the next movie and with filming on The Wrath of Khan already complete the mind meld scene was filmed and added into the movie without the directors knowledge.

Fans reacted strongly to the final product and the wrath of Khan tops our list with a stunning 698.3% return on investment.