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Posters, Directors, Books, Robots, Psuedosience and Paramount Politics in a Presidents Day Roundup

Anthony Pascale — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 22:45:22 +0000

Here are some some bite sized Trek nuggets to hold you over until the next item on TOSR or STXI.

To promote TOSR StarTrek.com is running a giveaway for a new poster for Star Trek Remastered. Got to this page to enter to win this 2′ x 3′ poster made for syndicated stations.

SciFi.com ran a poll on who should direct Star Trek XI and Joss Whedon came out on top with almost half the votes. Abrams came in 2nd to last with only 14%, click here for full results.

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Departure of Paramount President Shouldn’t Affect Trek XI

Anthony Pascale — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 06:45:57 +0000

Gail Berman (no relation to Rick) announced today that she is resigning as President of Paramount Pictures. Although Berman was involved in bringing in J.J. Abrams in a multi-year deal including Star Trek XI, Abrams’ primary champion within Viacom/Paramount has been Paramount CEO Brad Grey. A Paramount insider tells TrekMovie.com that Berman’s departure should have no impact on Star Trek XI as the project (along with Abrams himself) has too much support around the company. This support has recently been evidenced by the Chairman of Viacom talking up both Abrams and Trek XI to investors (on two separate occasions). Berman’s departure is mostly due to changes in the company after the Viacom split, the Dreamworks acquisition, and changes made in reporting lines by Brad Grey resulting in Berman finding she had more and more of a diminished role. More info at Variety

Viacom Chief Trumpets ‘Revitalized’ Trek [UPDATED]

Anthony Pascale — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 05:11:07 +0000

In speech to investors, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman named Star Trek in his list of key components of Paramount’s future. Apparently JJ Abrams really sold the new cheif of Viacom on Trek when he spoke to him last month (story). Specifically on Trek the executive said "we’re revitalizing it in a new and interesting way." This shows how Trek has again moved to the front burner for Viacom and Paramount. Also of note is how the article states a Trek XI release date as ’2008 or 2009′. It also claimed that Abrams would be directing the film. Abrams recently told TrekMovie that he still was not sure if he would direct and that they will start shooting in Spring 2007 to meet a Summer 2008 release date. TrekMovie will try and clarify these two issues, but it is good to see that Trek has support all the way to the top.
Full story in Variety

UPDATE: Abrams still not Confirmed To Direct

Viacom Chief Hearts JJ

Anthony Pascale — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 20:25:38 +0000

A couple of months ago TrekMovie speculated that changes in the leadership at Paramount’s parent company Viacom may ripple down to the recently signed JJ Abrams. However it appears that the new CEO of Viacom is a fan; Philippe Dauman had the following to say in a conference call with investors:

We are doing all this while ramping up to produce a strong line-up of films including Tent Pole under the Paramount marquee. A key component to this revitalization is making sure we attract the best talent and we’ve already been successful in making deals with some of the biggest names in the business including Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, whom I had the pleasure to spend some time with last night, Brad Pitt and Will Ferrell.

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Trek XI Convinced Paramount To Pass On Halo?

Anthony Pascale — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 19:31:36 +0000

Like Star Trek XI, the Halo movie was one of the more anticipated films planned for 2008. Now the film is in limbo, and apparently Trek is partially to blame. After losing financing from Universal and Fox, the Halo producers (Peter Jackson and Microsoft) pinned their hopes on Warner Brothers and Paramount. According to IESB, Abrams and Trek factored into Paramount’s decision to say no. IESB quotes a Paramount exec as saying

Why share a franchise with other parties when we own Star Trek and have a real director doing that film?.

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Christies Trek Sale Brings in $7.1 Million - Enterprise D Sells For $576k [updated]

Anthony Pascale — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 15:27:09 +0000

Article Updated: The Christies Trek auction is over and according to their release it brought in $7,107,040 (more than double their expectations). The highest priced item was the model for the ST:TNG Enterprise D for $576k, a new world record for Trek memorabilia. Other items that far exceeded expectations were McCoy’s TOS spacesuit for $144k and Picard’s flute from ‘Inner Light’ for $48k. Christies touts it as a truly ‘global event’ with bidders coming in from all over the world, however all but two of the top 10 items went to Americans.

could have been yours for half a $mil

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Trek Auction Begins With Some Big Money [updated]

Anthony Pascale — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 23:30:44 +0000

The auctioning of Trek’s history has begun and boy did Christies underestimate their prices. Not a single item has gone for anything close to their original estimates. For example: two empty Chateau Picard wine bottles (from Nemesis) were estimated to go for $700, in the end they went for $5500…for two empty wine bottles!. Christies and CBS Paramount had made around $250,000 off just the first 50 lots (out of 1000) which was at least double what they were estimating.Other highlights from the first 50 lots (note auction started with TNG films)

Enterprise E Captains Chair: $52,000 (est. $9k)
Enterprise E Blueprints: $2,400 (est. $600)
Picards Sextent: $5,500 (est. $300)
Ent-E Dedication Plate: $7,000 (est. $600)
Ent-E Engineering Table: $13,000 (est. $1200)
Borg Alcove: $8,000 (est. $700)
Borg Mannequin: $12,000 (est. $800)

Watch the auction live at History.com

Click ‘more’ to see end of day update

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Trek XI Writers Hold ‘Write A Line’ Contest For Transformers Movie

Anthony Pascale — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 23:59:58 +0000

Next summer Paramount Pictures is bringing the Transformers franchise to the big screen in a live action movie. The film is directed by Michael Bay and written by Trek XI scriptwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. Weeks ago we covered their streaming video Q&A session where they mentioned an upcoming fan contest. This week marks the start of the contest where they are letting fans submit lines for their script. 10 entries for a line of dialog will be recorded by star Peter Cullen (the voice of Optimus Prime) with the winning entry ending up in the final film. Paramont along with Orci and Kurtzman are to be applauded for their fan outreach on Transformers. With Orci and Kurtzman also having exec-producer credit for Star Trek XI we can only hope that this kind of feedback and involvement will be in store for Trek fans as well. The Transforms film is just finishing up principal filming and will be released on July 4th. The official website promises to provide many goodies like pictures, video, blogs, etc but so far it all says ‘coming soon’

Go to the Offical Transformers Site to Enter in the Contest

Roddenberry thinks Abrams ‘Gets It’, Dorn Does Not

Anthony Pascale — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 04:33:47 +0000

StarTrek.com has posted a very belated con report from the Creation Vegas convention from 5 weeks ago (see our story here). This one covers many different people but has some more detailed comments on Trek XI from Michael Dorn, Rod Roddenberry and Paula Block…here they are…

Rod Roddenberry Thinks Abrams ‘gets it”

I am very open to J.J. Abrams doing this next movie. I like thefact that it’s someone new. I also like the fact that he’s an actualfan of the show … I’d be concerned that it might be, y’know, another version of ‘Star Wars’ but now called ‘Star Trek’ … [But] I think he’s one of us. He gets it, he has the passion, and I think he’s gonna do a great job. I just want to make sure he’s strong enough to stand upto the executives that say, ‘We need bigger breasts.’ That comes afterwards — let’s get the story first.

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HDNet Not Interested in Trek Remastered, Is Interested in Trek Movies

Anthony Pascale — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 18:17:30 +0000

A week ago HDNet began showing Star Trek: Enterprise in HD. This makes it the sole source for any Star Trek TV in HD, as the new Trek Remastered is not being broadcast in HD (story). Since they currently have a monopoly on Trek in HD, TrekMovie.com contacted HDNet to see what is next and owner Mark Cuban himself answered our questions about the future of Trek on HDNet. Cuban tells TrekMovie.com that HDNet has spoken to CBS Paramount about the new Star Trek Remastered in HD but they are not interested in the show presently. Cuban did say he was open to HD version of other Trek series (like TNG) in HD if they become available, telling TrekMovie.com "It depends on the response to this series. If we find a lot of people are subscribing to HDNet to see Enterprise, we will of course look for more." But for the 10 Trek feature films in HD, Cuban is ready to go, telling TrekMovie "we are in discussions about them." Cuban and HDNet did not give any further details on when we might see the feature films in HD and our sources within Paramount and CBS are still trying to figure out where in the vast former Viacom empire deals with HDNet are struck.

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