Now's your chance to earn residuals on some Star Trek sequels (and The Crow 2: City of Angels)
Aux Features Star Trek
Times are tough, and most of us are all looking for creative ways to make an extra buck. Today, in one of our more desperate hours of need, we learned a new way earn some decent cash: Did you know you could bid on royalties for films you had absolutely no hand in making?
Offered through the auctioneers at Royalty Exchange, bidders can pony up right now for the chance to own a portion of 21 major studio film residuals released between 1976 and 2002. While some of them probably aren’t the most profitable titles out there right now—like 1991's The Perfect Weapon, from the guy who made Kickboxer—there are some actually surprising, potentially still lucrative movies in there. Like, for example, four Star Trek sequels.
Right now, you’ve got about five days left to buy a chunk of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, as well as the First Contact, Insurrection, and Nemesis entries. Other weird, left-field titles in the batch include Along Came a Spider, Beverly Hills Cop III, Futureworld (the 1976 sequel to the original Westworld), and The Crow 2: City of Angels.
“Over the last six calendar years, this asset has generated payments averaging about $3,400/year, with the highest-earning distribution totaling $5,598 in 2018,” reads the auction page description. As of writing this, the top bid is coming in at just over $35,000, so the asset could conceivably pay for itself in…a decade or so. Honestly, we have no idea how buying up old movie distribution rights could turn up a profit, unless more people than we assume mix up the Will Smith-Martin Lawrence Bad Boys franchise with the completely different, Sean Penn-starring Bad Boys film from 1983. We’re willing to give this whole thing a shot, though, if anyone wants in on a piece of Truck Turner.
34 Comments
I had no idea they made a Beverly Hills Cop 3, and it actually has Eddie Murphy in it.And while looking to see if the Crow 2 was actually playing on any cable channel, I discovered that this movie exists:An Edward Furlong as the Crow Crow movie. Did anyone know this movie existed? I kind of want to see it now just to see if it earns that 0% 🍅 score
Ugh. Beverly Hills Cop 3 – the one about the amusement park. It’s difficult to recommend watching it, but it is more Axel Foley, so….
Edward Furlong AND Tara Reid? What a find! According to IMDB, Danny Trejo is also in it, so it’s obviously a winner.
Ed Furlong, Tara Reid, AND DENNIS HOPPER
I got drunk one lonely night in college and watched all the Crow sequels. Let me tell you, if you don’t cast the superhumanly agile martial artsy son of the world’s most famous martial artist, the concept feels like near-deliberate self-parody. If you had dropped Furlong into a ‘90’s Hot Topic, he would have fit right in.
And I mean that exactly; he wouldn’t have stood out as an exceptionally smoldering goth or someone who was really pulling off the look. You’d just assume his new stepdad was a dick and that he routinely sat out gym class for being too sad.
I used to own it because I was a fan of The Crow series. This movie earns the score. It also has David Boreanaz as Luc Crash, the film’s villain, and boy does he ham it up.
Boreanaz is the only reason I watched this movie (see also: “Valentine”), and I remember nothing about it.
George Lucas had a cameo in Beverly Hills Cop 3. I believe he’s trying to get on an amusement park ride before being stopped.That’s the most interesting thing about that movie.
The most interesting thing about Beverly Hills Cop 3 is that apparently Murphy was jealous that Wesley Snipes was a sex symbol who could do drama, action and comedy and was taken more seriously, so he insisted in removing all the jokes from the movie.
You got my hopes up with a photo from Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan. I might actually throw a few bucks to own a part of that movie. Those other Star Trek sequels….don’t interest me.
That is definitely a photo from Star Trek VI. Khan-era Shatner had curlier hair.
Also, captain’s rank-thingy so it’s post-demotion.
I think it was Roger Ebert who said that the VI crew all had “sportscaster hair”.
Yeah. “Hair.”
Oh its real hair, its just not Shatners
Yep, that’s almost certainly Kirk saying “Fire!” (for a second I thought you were posting the TWOK pic and saying it was TUC, lol… I got internet-mad for a sec!)
Undiscovered Country is pretty good.
I’ll stick up for that movie. It’s great Trek.
Oh heck yes.
Watched this yesterday. Maybe Klingon blood shouldn’t be Splatoon purple and maybe Klingons don’t have such a hard-on for Shakespeare but it’s very good. Maybe I should read The Bard in the original Klingon.
That was my first thought, but I quickly realized Kirk was too old and too – um – sized-up for WOK.
First Contact is on the list, that is second after Wrath of Khan as the best Star Trek movies
I put in a bid for Nemesis. I’m sure you’ll all be jealous of my annual shiny nickel.
Not once that nickel gives you space herpes.
Just start spreading the word around the internet that people will be totally lost watching Picard if they don’t rewatch Nemesis first & you’ll be rolling in dimes.
Or rolling in bullets.
“Honestly, we have no idea how buying up old movie distribution rights could turn up a profit”Yeah, I cant figure how to make money from owning the rights to a bunch of fucking STAR TREK MOVIES. It’s a REAL wonder…
I wonder how many network/streaming executives personally buy these and then have their show runners or partners use them to collect the royalties.
This is basically how Steve Bannon makes money off Seinfeld, a show he had no hand in making. He bought shares of the production company that owns the show when it was up for sale and he was part of the team that managed the sale.
Yeah. Bannon may be an eldritch monstrosity from beyond the stars, but him making money off Seinfeld is just regular old horrible capitalism, not Super Double Ultra Fascism.
True. My point was essentially, “you may already be familiar with a case like this that got a lot of media attention and it’s a thing that happens regularly”.
He says so, but when The New Yorker did a profile on him a couple years ago they couldn’t verify that Bannon actually owns any piece of the Seinfeld residuals.
My understanding is that it has been verified that he does, but he transferred it to a shell company for tax dodging purposes and it was actually a much smaller percentage than he initially made it out to be.
“As of writing this, the top bid is coming in at just over $35,000“It’s probably Shatner.