Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Star Trek XI cancelled


From Darkhorizons, "The latest issue of Dreamwatch spoke with producer Rick Berman's assistant Doug Mirabello who revealed that the Erik Jendresen "Star Trek: The Beginning" script had been scrapped and that there isn't likely to be any Star Trek in movie theatres or on Television for quite some time says Trekweb.
He also says that to his knowledge there are no plans for using Patrick Stewart in any forthcoming TNG movie projects. "It's more likely that some executive had a casual conversation with him and brought up some hypotheticals which he ran with when some reporter asked him about Star Trek. There's a chance that someone else at Paramount is planning something huge and keeping us out of the loop. From what I've heard, Patrick wouldn't do another Trek movie unless they paid him Professor X money."

Now that the merger between UPN and WB is in full swing, Mirabello is not optimistic about a small screen future either - "The TV side is now technically in control of the franchise's future, and Les Moonves hates all things Sci-Fi. However, I think this is actually for the best - the public needs to want to see Star Trek again. The best way to achieve this is to take it away for a few years and then bring it back and do it right. The franchise needs a totally new creative team, some time off, and a cool new approach"."

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Damn it!

This pisses me off because the Trek people have had ample opportunities to redeem their stupidity by doing the obvious thing; the thing that everyone wants them to do: PUT ALL THE COOL ACTORS INTO ONE MOVIE!

I don't know why it's so difficult for them to understand that what we want is Sisko, Seven of Nine, Spock, Janaway, Kirk, Picard etc. all on the big screen. (So some of them are missing, dead etc. Who cares? It's Star Trek! They gave up on narrative logic back in the 'sixties.)

Fans have even made versions of the movie I'm describing here. There's a big CGI patchwork version of a trailer for a Picard/Kirk/Sisko movie on some fansite.

All of this makes me appreciate George Lucas even more for keeping control of his project. Of course it helps if you own the thing as he does, but still. Star Trek has been at the mercy of a revolving series of weird, stupid executives for decades...it's a miracle they even made it through one movie, let alone nine. As it is, there's an entire movie that exists solely to justify a reversed casting change (Search for Spock).

Anyway I'm irritated.

JPX said...

I'm irritated as well. As a long time Trek fan I too have been frustrated with the exact same thing, "PUT ALL THE COOL ACTORS INTO ONE MOVIE!" They could esaily make this happen - it's not like all of those actors/actresses are busy with other important projects. I do agree that there was "too much" Trek around for a while. At one point we had Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and films. I only watched Enterprise approximately 5 times. Hopefully fan desire will build again once there's been a Trek hole for long enough.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, but then the actors will be all old and everything and we'll be stuck with some ridiculous new cast who will be even worse than the Enterprise cast (just because their "Get seven actors: one swaggering young guy, one cute alien, one 'by the book' stern fellow, one 'dangerous' scarred warrior, one collagen/silicone babe, one quasi-robot and the captain" formula is getting so stale.

JPX said...

That's the main problem, some of them are really starting to hit the wall, especially Shatner - who barely resembles a human these days. Nimoy would be fine because He'd just be an old Vulcan. Spiner looks terrible these days. Picard always looks the same. Janeway and Sisko could still pull it off.

Anonymous said...

If they "forget" to put Dianna "Simpy" Troi in the movie, that's fine with me. She's the most odious performer ever to appear on Trek. I think I can see the plants dying around her in Ten Forward as she enters the room. (And her personality sucks too.) Kind of the reciprocal of Seven of Nine, who was not only very pretty but was genuinely charming, too. (That's why T'Pol is so awful; she's just a MAXXIM cover with no charm whatsoever.)

I'm rambling

JPX said...

"She's the most odious performer ever to appear on Trek." Oh man, I'm so with you on that! I used to argue with Octopunk over her character. I wanted to take a bat to her head every time she was on screen. Imagine how annoying it would be to have her around, "I sense you're anxious". Gee, thanks for pointing it out to everyone. They should have a scene with her and Wesley crashing into the sun.

Octopunk said...

Golly, I was kind of expecting a flurry of agreement; I seem to recall a "break" for Trek discussed more than once as the best idea for the franchise. Nevertheless, you've hit the button: they never want to break up their casts, so you have to have LaForge and Harry Kim and Dr. Bashir.

Wait a second! There's your movie! All the lame characters get possessed by evil aliens (led by Ryker, natch) and must be destroyed by all the good characters. It writes itself!

If you like, Jordan, we'll even park the bad guys in a Galaxy class starship (maybe even an alternate timeline Enterprise D that didn't crash) and you can blow it up with the Enterprise E.

Anonymous said...

"Take that, PINK BRIDGE SEATS!" (fires torpedo)

"Take that, CARPETED '70S HILTON LOUNGE masquerading as Engineering!" (fires phasers)

"Take that, FISCHER-PRICE WARP ENGINES!" (fires torpedo)

Octopunk said...

I have to admit I was expecting more in the way of props about the picture I posted here. Doesn't it signpost why the franchise is where it is? Think Captain Kirk vs. Captain Archer:

"Here I am in this room with two underwear-clad chicks rubbing goo on each other, but I'm going to rub my dog."

JPX said...

That picture is great - and now I have at least one reason to watch at least one episode of Enterprise!

Malevolent

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