Abrams Says Paramount Will Drop Star Trek/Axenar Lawsuit (gizmodo.com) 82
An anonymous reader writes:At a fan event Friday for the upcoming Star Trek movie, producer J. J. Abrams said Paramount Pictures' lawsuit against Axanar Productions was "going away." Director Justin Lin had been outraged by the lawsuit against the crowdfunded fan Star Trek film, and when he'd started discussing the situation with Abrams, the two "realized this was not an appropriate way to deal with the fans. The fans should be celebrating this thing. Fans of Star Trek are part of this world. So he went to the studio and pushed them to stop this lawsuit and now, within the next few weeks, it will be announced this is going away, and that fans would be able to continue working on their project."
In a statement, Axanar said they still "want to make sure we go through all the proper steps to make sure all matters are settled with CBS and Paramount..." adding "There is still a lot of work to do, but receiving this kind of public support helps immensely."
In a statement, Axanar said they still "want to make sure we go through all the proper steps to make sure all matters are settled with CBS and Paramount..." adding "There is still a lot of work to do, but receiving this kind of public support helps immensely."
Re:Sanity reigns??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's wait and see.... I am slightly optimistic and a tiny bit relieved... Unfortunately, even if it's true, it doesn't mean the "full" version is going to get made.
But we're talking about companies that allowed film rights to go to one, and tv rights to another.... For the same franchise that had been under the same roof for 30+ years.... Sanity is not the first word I'd use for either of them.
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It looks bad, straight off the get go. Jar Jar A can not afford any worse of a reputation with sci fi fans, his dumbed down (for us not for him, I really think he is doing the smartest possible off which he is capable) content, is really annoying those for whom the science and story is the most important part of science fiction and not empty action scenes which suit the cheetos crowd. The star trek series teaser is pretty bad, wrong music, really wrong voice for the narrator, all cheetos action and no scie
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I'm trying to figure out this word you used. It sounds like a tightly-knit troupe of fire dancers with a gay demeanor. Am I close?
I doubt they'll shut up any sooner than the rest of us, though. Seriously.
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It looks bad, straight off the get go. Jar Jar A can not afford any worse of a reputation with sci fi fans, his dumbed down (for us not for him, I really think he is doing the smartest possible off which he is capable) content, is really annoying those for whom the science and story is the most important part of science fiction and not empty action scenes which suit the cheetos crowd. The star trek series teaser is pretty bad, wrong music, really wrong voice for the narrator, all cheetos action and no science, all indicates Saturday afternoon cartoon fare shown on a week night. The law suit was doing even more damage and reality is that content in the fan made pick is more science and story and does not really compete with Jar Jar's which is targeted at a completely different audience, all science 'from the gut' action and you just know they will being tossing more Christianity into star trek to appeal to their target audience.
Science is important? Where is the real science in a jefferies tube or a tachyon beam or dilithium? While I prefer the older stuff to Abrams, he hasn't done terrible with the story. It is fair to good, which is what many of the old shows and movies are with some exceptions (Amok TIme, Wrath of Kahn, City on the Edge of Forever).
And please, tell me where he is shoving Christianity in?
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And please, tell me where he is shoving Christianity in?
No kidding right. Axe to Grind Alert right there. So sick of these self-loathing, yet strangely, self-entitled chimps who hate themselves and their Daddy and inject that into everything. (And JJ is Jewish by the way.)
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Where is the real science in a jefferies tube
Wait, seriously? You don't think that spaceships will have crawlways for access to engineering spaces?
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Nice selectivity there. My point was that it is -fiction-, but then again many of the basement dwelling neckbeards and libertarian cuckoos here have a hard time recognizing that fact.
It's not an interesting point for a variety of reasons, perhaps most notably that some (though clearly not all) Trek has been based on the science of its day. Obviously it's a mixture of science and fantasy at "best", but Trek at its best does actually have scientific content.
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Jar Jar's take on science is just straight up juvenile, like red matter (seriously the best he can come up with), or the silliness with a weapon sucking up the power of a sun, or a expelled cadet as commander of the fleet flagship, just dumb stuff, written by a child. Jar Jars work just comes off exactly like a Saturday afternoon cartoons, that same rushed science absent feel, all science fantasy and no science fiction (they had an excuse limited budgets, weekly episodes and children with a very limited und
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Of course Paramount and CBS are nervous (Score:5, Insightful)
I can understand why Paramount and CBS are nervous about Axanar. Having seen the trailers for "Star Trek: Beyond" and the short "Prelude To Axanar", I think that Axanar is going to be a hell of a lot better than Beyond. And Axanar looks like Trek. Beyond looks more like "Star Trek: Fast and Furious In Spaaaaace!!!!"
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CBS has a new Star Trek TV series in the works. Based on the new trailer (see below), Axanar looks a lot better in comparison.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXpPweAooeE [youtube.com]
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CBS has a new Star Trek TV series in the works. Based on the new trailer (see below), Axanar looks a lot better in comparison.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXpPweAooeE [youtube.com]
Spinning off the episodes in Enterprise where they went through the Tholian Web into an alternate universe were the Federation was evil and the Klingons good guys would have been an interesting series. Star Trek:Renegades had potential as well.
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Spinning off the episodes in Enterprise where they went through the Tholian Web into an alternate universe were the Federation was evil and the Klingons good guys would have been an interesting series. Star Trek:Renegades had potential as well.
Yeah, I had a love-hate relationship with Enterprise. Mostly with that dumb-ass Captain Scott Bakula, and that fucking dog, gawd. (Thanks for killing the franchise Scott! Kidding, sort of.) So much lost potential with Enterprise. With a different and better actor in the role of captain, it could have been much better. They finally got T'Pol right in look and behavior and then turned her into a freaking Emo. Sigh. On and on....
The Delphic Expanse was a goldmine of potential stories and they squandered it. D
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The second trailer for "Star Trek: Beyond" came out today and it is far, far less horrid than the first.
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Re:Of course Paramount and CBS are nervous (Score:5, Insightful)
Kirk makes out with a chick who looks like a zebra, ho hum.
Trek used to be a show about ethics and the prime directive where they'd solve a mystery of the week, overcome a paradox of time travel or Wesley would be sentenced to death.
Now it seems all about the explosions and space warfare.
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That was the increasingly preachy-and-tedious new stuff. The original was a good mix of thought and action.
From what I've seen, the Jar-Jar trek movies have been a horrid mix of action and, uhm ... something ...
Re: Of course Paramount and CBS are nervous (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Holy God. I had been ignoring the Axanar news until I read your comment. Then I looked for it on YouTube and saw the faux-documentary about the lead-up to Axanar. That was better than anything Trek has ever produced, and yet it did still look like Trek. It wasn't cheesy or self-absorbed in fan-ishness. My only complaint is that I had a hard time believing that the Klingon commander would sit down for an interview; other than that, it was gorgeous and good.
Thanks, dude. You made my evening.
And that folks, is why there was a lawsuit (Score:2, Insightful)
You just nailed the entire reason for the lawsuit.
Everyone knows the property is being trashed.
No Trek fans are genuinely excited about Beyond. It looks like gatbage.
And here comes a fan film that cost next to nothing and it's actually awesome. It's true Star Trek to its core. No cheesy stunts. No action heroes. No "genius" twenty-somethings who look like models. No stupid banter in the face of imminent death.
Just narrative and character.
Paramount should be scared. They hired a formulaic hack to repackage S
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No Trek fans are genuinely excited about Beyond. It looks like gatbage.
Well, guess what: they don't care about Trek fans. It's a tiny market that doesn't matter to them, they want the rest of the audience. They're willing to turn Star Trek into an action series, as long as regular people not into Star Trek go and see their movie. The Trekkie market is minuscule in comparison to what a multi-hundred million dollar movie needs to make a profit.
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Trek fans are an irrelevant slice of the market, and trying to appeal to them is what made the franchise horribly unprofitable.
Excuse me? When did Paramount or CBS try to appeal to Trek fans, past the first couple of movies? DS9, maybe? Other than that they've aimed straight at schlock central, nonstop.
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For the years when it was accepted that the even-numbers Star Trek movies were the good ones, adjusted for inflation:
The Wrath of Khan made $195,813,803 from a budget of $27,791,563.
The Voyage Home made $240,072,498 from a budget of $45,951,859.
The Undiscovered Country made $170,579,218 from a budget of $52,816,901.
First Contact made $222,943,340 from a budget of $68,702,290.
(Those numbers come from Boxofficemojo and Wikipedia, adjusted for inflation via http://www.davemanuel.com/infl... [davemanuel.com])
Granted, that's no
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No Trek fans are genuinely excited about Beyond. It looks like gatbage.
Makes me glad not to be a trekkie, trekker, Trek Fan, or whatever they're called this week. I'm just a science fiction fan, who watches each Star Trek product one time.
That said, they shouldn't hate on their fans. Seems pretty absurd. If they're really worried about the competition, they should offer a contract that gives them rights to productize the derivative work in exchange for a use license. Just cross-licensing without any money changing hands would solve the whole problem including all the related p
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From what I saw it looked like Axanar is a bunch of talking head shots with zero crew, no real sets, and an astonishing marriage between making what they have look impressive while actually having nothing to look at.
That's actually pretty good for, so far, having nothing to look at.
It's easy (very easy) to mock a new Star Trek that boldly goes mostly where the existing franchise has gone before,
Especially when it's going to go places it's gone recently.
but the fan films seem to be... well, fan films.
And yet still better than anything official in ages.
Paramount/CBS really don't have any reason to be nervous beyond confusion in the marketplace,
That's not a problem anyway, because the existence of any quality Trek content increases the value of all Trek content.
The whole prelude thing is clever and they did a great job dressing up a zero-budget talking head thing with nice CG and familiar actors, but there would be an open revolt if this is the quality of the upcoming "All Access" Star Trek product.
You just said the quality was good, and now you're complaining about the quality?
Axanar (Score:5, Interesting)
The company is Axanar Productions: http://www.axanarproductions.c... [axanarproductions.com]
The movie is Prelude to Axanar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There's no "e" in Axanar, unless the E is for the missing slashdot editor who approved it without bothering to read.
E
Re:Axanar (Score:5, Funny)
This is Slashdot remember, the day that everything is spelled right and the grammar is all correct will be the internet apocalypse
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You want to step outside and say that to my face coward
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You want to step outside and say that to my face coward
Let's watch. The hatch to the void of outer space is that way. Push the button.
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It's A Religion. Kinda Cult-Like Even. (Score:2)
lawsuit isn't dropped until the lawsuit is dropped (Score:1)
The lawsuit isn't dropped, until the lawsuit is dropped. A director and a producer are saying the lawsuit is dropped because of their "outrage", but the fact of the matter is they really have no control over the lawsuit. Sounds like they are just trying to get the fans on their side and if the big corps don't do what they want then "they're the bad guys" while "we're the good guys". But the big corps are used to being the bad guys, so really no telling if this will work. I also don't really believe J.J. Abr
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Fans need to understand the problem (Score:1)
It's a core element of IP law that a company that holds trademarks must defend those trademarks. Failure to do so becomes legal evidence against the validity of the exclusive use of those trademarks and can lead to their loss.
As a result, a company like Paramount, with a valid trademark on a valuable property like the Star Trek franchise has no choice but to sue people who try to use the name, characters, etc in any other commercial endeavor. If they fail to sue, then eventually Fox, Sony, and the rest coul
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Legit (Score:2)
If Paramount/CBS were smart they make a deal with these guys, throw some money at it and syndicate it. I don't know why Paramount/CBS hold so tightly to this franchise. They should take a page of Disney's handbook and give us fans multiple movies and shows.
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They already do. They allow fan fiction and works to be created - provided you don't try to make money off the property (or try to destroy it). This is to be honest one of the more open IP franchises out there.
The problem is, it's a thin grey line separat
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> If Paramount/CBS were smart they make a deal with these guys, throw some money at it and syndicate it.
Many companies do that buying out smaller competitors. The result is often quite poor. The managerial, technical, and cultural approaches of the smaller company are lost, many of the best staff take the buyout money and move on to other projects, and you get uncertain quality about new projects. It's especially bad when the corporate offices have policies that work well for larger companies, and their
A little more respect for J.J.A., now (Score:2)
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Hear hear, well spoken, Bruce. Now only time will tell if they turn off the legal heat on the fans, who are doing for (practically) nothing what the studios can't do with million dollar budgets. I mean, why can't they study the 20 or so good episodes of TOS and and get inspired for a new Trek? Why is the ONLY idea they ever come up with is blow up (or, at best, decommission) the Enterprise, when the Enterprise is really the only reason we go see the show?
"These are the voyages... of bad boy Kirk, his goofy sidekick Spock, and some supporting cast with familiar names; their on-going mission, to beat up aliens, perform outrageous stunts, make awkward wise-cracks, and hop in the sack with every..."
Doesn't sound right, does it?
Been waiting a real
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JarJar didn't stick his neck out for shit. He made himself look good to fans for little to no risk.
You can't prove that one way or the other, it's literally just your opinion. Regardless he's on public record as saying that so we have to take it at face value unless he proves otherwise with his actions.
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you know, as long as we're not actually being blinded by a lens flare