From syfyportal, This fall will mark two years since "Star Trek" ended an 18-year run on television, but if Paramount Pictures -- and parent company Viacom -- get a big Christmas present under its tree in 2008, there's a possibility that a new Star Trek series could be on the air as early as 2009."I'm sure CBS is thinking about that," Robert Orci, a writer for the upcoming Star Trek motion picture, told SciFi Wire erlier this week. "That's not [something] we're thinking about. We're just thinking about the movie. Certainly, I don't know how they could not think about that."
Then again, there is a number of reasons. "Star Trek: Voyager" saw seven years of declining ratings on UPN, and despite an early boost for the prequel series "Star Trek: Enterprise" in 2001, ratings for the network continued to fall before UPN decided to pull the plug on its last series after just four seasons.
Then again, there is a number of reasons. "Star Trek: Voyager" saw seven years of declining ratings on UPN, and despite an early boost for the prequel series "Star Trek: Enterprise" in 2001, ratings for the network continued to fall before UPN decided to pull the plug on its last series after just four seasons.
At the same time, the movie end of Star Trek wasn't doing too well, either, with "Star Trek: Nemesis" -- the 10th film in the series -- flopping at the box office. Viacom at the time considered the market to be too oversaturated with Trek, and the halls of the great Starship Enterprise went dark.
Now with a new film in the works and a big name attached to direct, Viacom might be interested once again.
But where would the show go? CBS Corp. holds the television rights to the franchise, but that doesn't necessarily mean the show has to go there.
"I really don't expect you would see Star Trek come back to a major network unless it comes back as a totally fresh and new product," a source with CBS tells SyFy Portal. "It's impossible to look down the road on what could be in the works for networks two and three years out, but space-faring shows have changed too much to see a return of a traditional Star Trek series."
SciFi Channel's "Battlestar Galactica" and other wholesale remakes like "Bionic Woman" seem to be the order of the day now in the genre, along with more ensemble-style series with stronger real-world implications like "Lost" on ABC and "Heroes" on NBC. But 2009 could be a very different year for television audiences, especially if a Star Trek film is a hit at the box office.
"You never know what networks will do one day to the next," the source said. "A Star Trek series could end up on CBS, or it could end up somewhere else. But likely, if it comes anywhere back to network television, it will end up somewhere like The CW."
SciFi Channel's "Battlestar Galactica" and other wholesale remakes like "Bionic Woman" seem to be the order of the day now in the genre, along with more ensemble-style series with stronger real-world implications like "Lost" on ABC and "Heroes" on NBC. But 2009 could be a very different year for television audiences, especially if a Star Trek film is a hit at the box office.
"You never know what networks will do one day to the next," the source said. "A Star Trek series could end up on CBS, or it could end up somewhere else. But likely, if it comes anywhere back to network television, it will end up somewhere like The CW."
The next Star Trek movie, tentatively titled "Star Trek XI," premieres Dec. 25, 2008, and begins filming in November.
1 comment:
Okay, here’s the question: is there any franchise that comes even close to Star Trek in terms of screen time?
James Bond has 21 movies to their ten, but Trek has – what – 27 or 28 seasons on television all together plus ten movies. That’s huge. Blows Star Wars right out of the water just on the movies.
So…we don’t have any precedent for this, except it’s come up before that the franchise should sink for a while. But it has sunk for a while, Enterprise tanked it, and the standard of sinkage is the best one we could hope for: the storytelling got bad.
So if the storytelling is good, we should run with it. Right?
I think this call to “let it die” is coming from the sheer bulk of available story, as if that’s a bad thing. But this isn’t a singular story that we should let end organically – those stories do end. This is instead a universe, which can be a vast, rich opportunity for stories. If it’s done right there’s no intrinsic reason to end it.
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