That would have been a harder sell though. Kirk and Spock are iconic, it has the ability to draw in the crowds based off that alone. Captain *** of the NCC-1701M doesn't do that for the franchise.
1) People are in general familiar with Kirk and the Enterprise, and they will see this as a possibly sussessful reboot just like the recent Batman movies. They expect to be able to watch the film not needing to know the "verse". The TMP era had the benefit of having a large fanbase but also being standalone. You could watch the TMP movies without having watched the series and still enjoy them. There isn't some massive learning curve for everyone.
2) Let's say they did do a post DS9 or Voyager movie. It wouldn't be pick up and run with it for the general movie going population. At least not without a massive marketing campaign. The TNG movies were able to pull it off somewhat since TNG was fairly popular, but anything post TNG is just going to be to unfamiliar for most movie goers. Even if they made an excellent post DS9 movie, it might energize the fan base but it won't be some massive hit across the population like LotR or Batman.
Now I'm not arguing this from a fan perspective but a business one, this gamble paid off for Paramount big time. I know plenty of folks who would have had piss all interest in some post DS9 movie who loved this one. I can appreciate the sentiment of them taking a giant dump on your canon, I've seen my favorite franchise revamped for selling four year olds toys and the Force turned into parasites in your blood stream
But at least your revamp was written for adults.
In addition you need to think of what this does to the franchise as a whole, which lets be honest has been struggling in recent years. A movie that garnered this much attention will be high test fuel for future projects. Sure you might have had to eat a Big Mac now but there is a pretty good chance that it will pay for prime rib later.
