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rfmcdonaldWhen the James Whitbrook's io9 article "CBS Suddenly Wants to Put a Stop to Axanar, the Crowdfunded Star Trek Movie" appeared on my Facebook feed, I was surprised. Specifically, I was surprised that Axanar made it this far without triggering a reaction from the copyright owners.
That Hollywood Reporter article is here.
I'm more than a bit familiar with matters of canon and Star Trek, as I hope Monday's post about expanded universes made clear. It's worth noting that the Battle of Axanar and the Four Years War between the Federation and the Klingons is not part of the canon. Nothing in the corpus of filmed and televised works suggests that there was an open war between the Klingons and the Federaiton in the 23rd century, and nothing in the contemporary canon of novels and other tie-in materials does, either. This is a legacy of the canon of the 1980s, of FASA's Star Trek: The Roleplaying Game. Axanar and its completed predecessor, the short film Prelude to Axanar, seem to exist within a vision of the Star Trek universe drawing heavily from this 1980s continuity, but this vision is not being actively explored outside of the film.
FASA ended up losing its license to produce material in the Star Trek universe in 1989 because this material, the copyright holders felt, did not reflect the Trek that they were creating. Wikipedia's summary is concise.
FASA was a licensed producer of Star Trek. The people behind this product are not. At most, they might have had a lack of opposition from Paramount. Looking at the project's Indiegogo page, it's easy to see why Paramount might object to Axanar. It looks as if the producers were challenging Paramount's ownership of Star Trek.
Especially since Paramount is on the verge of releasing a third new film, and is set to launch a television series in a couple of years, I quite understand their willingness to defend Star Trek against this unauthorized challenger. What if the official and unauthorized productions get confused, for instance? The dilution of intellectual property is a real issue.
The formal complaint from Paramount cites many, many instances of copyright infringement on the part of the makers of Axanar. I just do not see how Axanar has a chance of carrying on.
Axanar has attracted a lot of attention since its hugely successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns raised over a million dollars to make a movie set decades before the events of the original Star Trek series. But after over a year of tolerating the film’s existence, CBS and Paramount have cracked down.
Axanar promised to be a lavish independent production, a movie that looked at the early days of the Federation’s conflict with the Klingon Empire in the years before the original Star Trek television series and that culminated in a bloody battle at the titular planet of Axanar. The story was uncovered ground in CBS’s official Star Trek work in both movies or live-action television. Meanwhile, CBS not only had a long-standing reputation of embracing the Star Trek fan film community and their projects but had also met with Axanar executive producer Alec Peters in recent months to confirm that, as long as the new film wasn’t made for commercial purposes, CBS was fine with it.
Until now.
The Hollywood Reporter just revealed that CBS and Paramount filed a lawsuit on Christmas Day seeking an injunction against Axanar in an effort to get the movie scrapped as well as seek damages for “direct, contributory and vicarious copyright infringement.” The thrust of the suit seems to be that because of Axanar’s vast crowdfunding success, the project has evolved beyond the sort of fan film that CBS would tolerate into something that violates its copyright. And presumably, with a new Star Trek show entering production next year, the thought of a wildly popular fan creation attracting attention and potential confusion is not something CBS wants.
That Hollywood Reporter article is here.
I'm more than a bit familiar with matters of canon and Star Trek, as I hope Monday's post about expanded universes made clear. It's worth noting that the Battle of Axanar and the Four Years War between the Federation and the Klingons is not part of the canon. Nothing in the corpus of filmed and televised works suggests that there was an open war between the Klingons and the Federaiton in the 23rd century, and nothing in the contemporary canon of novels and other tie-in materials does, either. This is a legacy of the canon of the 1980s, of FASA's Star Trek: The Roleplaying Game. Axanar and its completed predecessor, the short film Prelude to Axanar, seem to exist within a vision of the Star Trek universe drawing heavily from this 1980s continuity, but this vision is not being actively explored outside of the film.
FASA ended up losing its license to produce material in the Star Trek universe in 1989 because this material, the copyright holders felt, did not reflect the Trek that they were creating. Wikipedia's summary is concise.
First, Star Trek: The Next Generation was growing increasingly popular and Paramount wished to exert greater control over its property and derivative works. FASA had, by 1989, published two works set in the TNG era, The Next Generation Officer's Manual in 1988 and The Next Generation First Year Sourcebook in 1989. These works contained many extrapolations based on material in the new series and were already beginning to conflict with what was depicted on screen.
Second, Paramount was concerned by the amount of violence depicted in FASA's game. They mistakenly thought that most players took on the roles of characters from the TV series, not their own new characters, and believed that violence-based solutions to problems should not be offered even as a sub-optimal way to solve problems in the game. At this time, FASA was scheduled to publish two products which conflicted with this view: a supplement detailing the "Star Fleet Marines" and other ground combat forces in the Star Trek universe, and a strategic-level board game, Operation: Armaggedon, which would include in its scenarios one where the Federation pre-emptively attacked the Klingon and Romulan empires. When Paramount learned of these prospective products their belief that FASA's notion of what Star Trek should be differed too greatly from their own became more established.
FASA was a licensed producer of Star Trek. The people behind this product are not. At most, they might have had a lack of opposition from Paramount. Looking at the project's Indiegogo page, it's easy to see why Paramount might object to Axanar. It looks as if the producers were challenging Paramount's ownership of Star Trek.
Axanar is the first fully-professional, independent Star Trek film. While some may call it a "fan film" as we are not licensed by CBS, Axanar has professionals working in front and behind the camera, with a fully-professional crew--many of whom have worked on Star Trek itself--who ensure Axanar will be the quality of Star Trek that all fans want to see.
For you, the Star Trek fan, Axanar is a return to the type of Star Trek all of us grew up on, with a hopeful future where mankind works with other races to explore the stars, via storytelling that is positive and teaches us about ourselves. Axanar feels like Star Trek because it is made by two of the biggest Star Trek fans in the world, Alec Peters and Robert Burnett. Alec was the executive producer/co-writer of Prelude to Axanar, and Rob wrote & directed Free Enterprise.
Especially since Paramount is on the verge of releasing a third new film, and is set to launch a television series in a couple of years, I quite understand their willingness to defend Star Trek against this unauthorized challenger. What if the official and unauthorized productions get confused, for instance? The dilution of intellectual property is a real issue.
The formal complaint from Paramount cites many, many instances of copyright infringement on the part of the makers of Axanar. I just do not see how Axanar has a chance of carrying on.
