Paramount’s views on animated IPs isn’t the savior for Star Trek: Prodigy as you’d hope

Paramount made a big announcement saying they were done with theatrical releases of original IPs, and that may hurt Star Trek: Prodigy’s future.

Paramount, the parent company of Star Trek, made waves this week when they revealed that all future theatrical animated films would only be from established IPs. An IP is short-hand for ‘intellectual property’, and when it comes to the films they’d consider making for theaters, the names are pretty well known.

According to various outlets, the only films that will be made will have to have a big following and some of the names include Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,  SpongeBob SquarePants, and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

In fact, the current plan is to turn popular shows into movies, and popular films into shows, just like with the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem film. It’s predicted to do so well at the box office, that it’s already gotten a series in the works for Paramount+.

And the reason behind all this stems from the CEO of Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon, Brian Robbins. Robbins told Variety that they’re done losing money on unpredictable IPs.

"We’re not going to release an expensive original animated movie and just pray people will come"

Star Trek: Prodigy was likely a casualty of Brian Robbins’ new mentality

Television and streaming shows cost as much as movies to make these days, but their returns are far more minimized. Star Trek is among the most expensive franchise in all of Hollywood currently to make shows for, and it’s easy to see that if original IPs are getting shuttered for more predictable IPs, it’s fair to say that Prodigyg was likely a victim of this new mentality.

While this pertains to films, Prodigy was a show that was talking about films in the future, and considering how they have and intend to take popular shows and turn them into films and vise versa, it’s fair to say they didn’t think Prodigy was popular enough to justify being made into a film.

If it wasn’t a big enough show to be made into a show, then why keep it around? At least that may be the reasoning for its cancelation.

The problem is there isn’t another avenue for Prodigy to land that won’t be with a direct competitor like say Cartoon Network. It seems far more likely that the second season may go straight to DVD at this point.