“Star Trek Beyond” producer J.J. Abrams just announced during a fan event held on the Paramount lot that the studio would be dropping its lawsuit against producers of the proposed fan-produced Star Trek feature “Axanar.”
“A few months back there was a fan movie and this lawsuit that happened between the studio and these fans, and [“Star Trek Beyond” director Justin Lin] was sort of outraged by this as a longtime fan,” said Abrams. “We started talking about it and realized this wasn’t an appropriate way to deal with the fans. The fans of Star Trek are part of this world. We went to the studio and pushed them to stop this lawsuit. Within a few weeks, it’ll be announced that this lawsuit is going away.”
Fan-produced sequels to Trek TV shows and movies are shockingly numerous, but Paramount never took legal action until “Axanar,” whose month-long Kickstarter campaign -- launched at 2014’s Sand Diego Comic Con -- managed to go way beyond its $100,000 target and raised $638,471.
(At the same Parmount-lot event, it was announced that “Star Trek Beyond,” which opens July 22, would receive its world premiere at San Diego Comic-Con, which this year runs July 21-24.)
“Axanar” tells the story of Starfleet captain Kelvar Leonard Garth, who became an idol of James Kirk thanks to the important role he played in the Four Years War that pitted the Federation of Planets against The Klingon Empire.
Star Trek fans originally discovered Garth as the shape-changing madman who menaced Kirk, Spock and the Enterprise in the 1969 episode “Whom Gods Destroy.”
The coming feature-length “Axanar” takes place a decade before Kirk’s five-year mission, long before experimental treatments decimated Garth’s sanity.
Gary Graham reprises his “Star Trek: Enterprise” role as Vulcan ambassador Soval, and is joined by “Battlestar Galactica” vets Kate Vernon and Richard Hatch, as well as Tony Todd (“Candyman”), and JG Hertzler (“Deep Space Nine”).
