Lotus Fleet Forums

 CBS Studios and Paramount Pictures have launched a lawsuit against Star Trek: Axanar, and are wanting damages for copyright infringement ... amounting to $150K for ""each work" infringed upon. 

My thought is .... why now?

http://trekmovie.com/2015/12/30/star-tr ... ringement/

Why? Because now they try to push out a movie receiving lukewarm interest, a TV series for a more lucrative outlet many people already look at dubiously and there has been too much resistance from the core fans to their new Trek which could cause diminishing profits.

If Axanar would strengthen that resistance and challenge with it's quality what they are trying to put out, of course they are going to kick back hard.

Star Trek Continues will be next.

My guess is it got to big and book longer qualified in their eyes as a fan film. They raised a lot of money on kick starter and cbs must have decided that amounts to infringement

Mostly Greed... but also part fear and part jealousy.... On CBS-Paramount's part.

They (Paramount) can spend hundreds of millions of dollars making mediocre non-cannon rubbish yet fear a crowd-funded independent film done at a fraction of the cost. The main difference here? Small budget but big story... and a group of actual Star Trek fans committed to making a quality film... not just rip-off pieces of what has already been done.

CBS? Worried about this impacting their greed oriented pay-to-see Star Trek series in January 2017 involving the same incompetents that created these Abrams fiascoes? Hmmm interesting timing on all of this...

Fortunately, it looks like the Axanar team has attorneys along with a growing fan-base on their side. I hope that they somehow prevail for numerous reasons, including how many of us want to see this completed project/film.

As much as we would hope for, there's a snowball's chances in Hell of that happening... simply due to the fact that CBS/Paramount owns Star Trek, pure and simple. Anything that can be related to it is liable to be legally impeached at their whim if not properly licensed (like STO is).

Remember the Star Wars Kid.

An update on current status ...

http://trekmovie.com/2016/03/22/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-current-state-of-the-axanar-lawsuit/

It would seem the battle progresses toward Wolf 359.

This kind of stuff has always bothered me. In recent years, with the explosion of digital media and social media, the major studios have been stepping all over fair use. Things like this, critical reviews and youtube review channels are being targeted at an unheard of rate. Hollywood is being left behind by the digital age, and it is only going to get worse as the fans fight back.

This makes me think about the reason why there is an "Axanar" in the first place.

CBS/Paramount lost the Star Trek style and spirit long ago (after TNG in fact). But with Abrams, they could not have lost it more. His popcorn childish flash star wars demo reels conquered an audience; but don't be fooled by the big box office numbers; tickets just cost about ten times more than in the times of STTMP and when you convert it all back, those Nu-Trek films falls below the fifth rank. The fact is, they lost the fanbase. And with all those FX movies out there nowadays, the Trek fame wave they surfed on will dwindle and flaten soon.

Now, that fanbase tries to regain what was lost.

Maybe Axanar went too far and truly infringed on rights for a profit; now the court will decide. But one would hope that CBS/Paramount would take notice of the phenomenon (It looks like there is more fanmade Trek stories than just about anything else) and realize that they should work at bringing back Trek true to form as much as possible.

The only positive thing that one can truly give to Abrams movies is the fast-paced action, contrasting with the alleged boring, static meeting room style some people complain about. Well, DS9 was full of action and, despite Ira Behr claiming to hate Roddenberry's vision, didn't completely lost it like Orci & Kurtzman claiming to be hard core fans. ENT was also action-packed and brought back some of the old Trek despite all the canon blunders that alienated the fans... and Abrams and Co went light years worse in that regard.

And that's the crap CBS/Paramount wants to sell us. Now comes all those "Phase II", "Continues" and "Axanars" getting more success with a fraction of CBS/Paramount investments. It's bound to hurt. But it should open eyes.

A cunning studio would note this, use this as a free fanbase and target audience estimates tool and, instead of stomping one those Indies, would let them do it... but making a deal with them to use their style, ideas and success (if not their staff and crew) for their own and give life to an even better (and more profitable for them) Star Trek than we ever had before.

One could hope...