With the addition of John Cho, Simon Pegg, and Eric Bana; JJ Abrams’ new Star Trek officially has the biggest mainstream cast of any Trek film to date. There’s a reason for that… it may also have the biggest budget.

Clint over at Moviehole says they started with a $130 million budget, which is plenty huge. But apparently that number has now been upped to a massive $150-160 million in spending on a brand new Trek. That makes this Star Trek the most expensive ever made.

Actually, the crazy thing to consider here is that no Star Trek movie has ever made $160 million in theaters. Trek’s biggest earner ever was Star Trek: First Contact, which grossed a total of $150 million worldwide. The franchise’s worst performer was the last one, Star Trek: Nemesis with its pathetic $67 million worldwide. Most of the franchise’s films earned in the $100 - $120 million range, which is probably why Paramount kept investing in them. Star Trek never broke a lot of box office records, but the films were dependable. You could count on a Trek flick to get your money back… assuming you kept things under the $100 million mark.

Now it’s a whole new game. In order for Paramount to break even, Abrams’ Star Trek will also have to be the biggest blockbuster smash in Trek history. That’s probably why there’s been so much talk from JJ about appealing to a wider audience. Even if Trek’s entire base shows up to see it, the best they can hope for is to end up $10 million in the whole. Paramount needs soccer Moms and idiot teenagers on skateboards to show up, or they’re screwed.

So while it’s good news that this should be the slickest looking Trek movie yet, with the need to make enough money to cover the budget, you have to wonder what sort of pressure Abrams is under. Paramount needs a mainstream movie, appealing to geek audiences won’t do it. Could this mean trampling on continuity? Maybe MySpace up Trek a little bit? Maybe Trek was better off with rubber aliens and cardboard sets.