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According to io9 J.J. Abrams announced that Paramount Pictures' lawsuit against Axanar Productions was "going away.".
The report comes from a Star Trek event in Los Angeles, at which the trailer for Justin Lin's new film Star Trek Beyond debuted:
io9 was at the fan event, where Abrams noted that Star Trek Beyond's director, Justin Lin, was outraged at the legal situation that had arisen.
Axanar is a kickstarter-funded fan film covering events preceding the original Star Trek, and the team responded to the io9 article with cautious optimism
While we're grateful to receive the public support of JJ Abrams and Justin Lin, as the lawsuit remains pending, we want to make sure we go through all the proper steps to make sure all matters are settled with CBS and Paramount.
Paramount's legal manoeuvrings, and IPR claims, have been covered previously on Soylent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22 2016, @06:30PM
What about the poor, needy MPAA? The MPAA should go after JJ & Axanar so they can feed their starving underprivileged kids.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Sunday May 22 2016, @06:42PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Sunday May 22 2016, @10:41PM
My assumption is a change in personnel. Old manager thought it was great and helped build the brand. New blood thinks like a cog.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday May 23 2016, @08:36AM
No, it's in keeping with their previous policy. The grandparent is slightly wrong. They were not lenient towards projects that did not make a profit, they were lenient towards projects that did not ask for money. The former would require someone to audit the accounts of said projects. Axanar is paying actors, paying special effects folks, and asking for money. This crossed the line - other projects have been run entirely by volunteers (including some of the original cast).
This is a particularly important distinction because of Hollywood accounting. Very few movies make a profit, though certain individuals involved make huge amounts. It's very easy to set up a 'fan' production using entirely professional staff, pay the producer and director huge amounts, and then make no profit. Should this get a free license?
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday May 23 2016, @06:14PM
Yeah, but the other productions (Star Trek Continues and Star Trek: Phase II) both "asked for money" by soliciting donations. Their costs weren't that high of course since they used amateur/volunteer actors and a lot of self-financing, and probably got the FX work done for free, but they did ask for donations to offset the principals' personal expenses. Building all those sets was expensive.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday May 24 2016, @08:47AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 24 2016, @03:42PM
Phase II takes donations here [startreknewvoyages.com]. I've donated small amounts to both productions. Unfortunately I can't see their blog entry right now as their site is blocked for me, but as I remember it, their statement on donations is something to the effect of attempting to offset their production expenses (as I said, building those sets costs money), and they don't make any profit or pay any salaries. I seem to remember reading that James Cawley spent $100k of his own money initially.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Sunday May 22 2016, @07:06PM
IANAL, but it seems that lawyers (to be now known as Lusers) and 'bright lights' (now to be known as Idiots) need to stay away from the decision making: someone gets a great idea and says "lets invite the fans into this world and we will call this world.... this world" and things go great guns and the thing explodes and does good.
Then the Lusers and Idiots get involved, and the original, great, money making/fan spreading idea gives way to the "let's squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze EVERY LAST FRACKING DOLLAR FROM THIS SOMBITCH", they push away the creators, which helps push away the fans, and then they are left with pushing down Windows 10 updates whether you want it or not and pushing the fans onto linux and mac and
Wait.... where was I???
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23 2016, @01:35AM
fucking pottering.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Sunday May 22 2016, @07:19PM
An idea is to create a fund where any entity that tries unsubstantiated legal attack will be responded by the collective financial power to deter any such action.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday May 22 2016, @08:20PM
Star Trek Beyond's director, Justin Lin, was outraged
I googled around and its very unusual although not unheard of for a stage director to get IP rights. Usually that's signed away in the contract to get a paycheck although sometimes stage directors keep rights to the stuff they do (a lot of who says what while standing where type stuff).
So something like the canonical conference at the rail between kirk, bones, and spock smells of something a stage director like JJ Abrams COULD copyright (but probably signed away in exchange for a paycheck).
Anyway if the director doesn't have the rights, then his opinion really doesn't matter anyway.
The fact that all three directors of different movies agreed is nice, but its totally irrelevant to legal. Its as if all three recording studio chiefs agreed, well thats nice but who cares.
Its possible that JJ could testify at a hearing, if it came to that, that he never pushed for stage director rights because he didn't think it was copyrightable. Which would save the folks being sued. It would probably piss off the guy who hired him quite a bit.
It gives publicity more than actually helps anyone legally.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Sunday May 22 2016, @09:51PM
You don't need to own the rights to be outraged.
Both of these guys (Lin and Abrams) carry enough weight that if they said "Fuck you, find another director", it would hurt more than having a fan film would (which is pretty easy since the film will probably just end up keeping fans interested and attracting new ones).
Lawyers, accountants, and MBAs can't seem to think beyond the next quarter, and most aren't even very good at that.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Sunday May 22 2016, @08:32PM
CBS Paramount could easily license them for a small fee and let them play in a sort of Expanded Universe / Star Wars Legends sort of way. Most mainstream moviegoers aren't going to get mixed up by this, and it might just yield some fruitful ideas for the future.
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