Star Trek IV Reaanounced…Again
This is…what the fourth time now?
So, yeah. The fourth of the Bad Reboot associated Star Trek movies has been announced yet again.
From Deadline:
“After orchestrating the Marvel/Disney+ series WandaVision to a 23- Emmy-nomination haul, Matt Shakman (Oh god, please no) has made a deal to direct the next untitled Star Trek film for Paramount and Bad Robot’s JJ Abrams.
Deadline hears the film will now move at warp speed (*GAG*) and begin production next spring. They have a script by Lindsey Beer and Geneva Robertson-Dworet. This is significant in that it is the first Star Trek film to be written by female screenwriters. Recent attempts at scripting Trek films were done by The Revenant‘s Mark L. Smith (for Quentin Tarantino) and another by Noah Hawley.”
I was really impressed by Lindsey Beer’s IMDB page, it consists entirely of projects that are either announced or in pre-production and only one thing that has actually been produced. She has 12 projects she has been signed for but hasn’t written yet. They are all kid’s shows.
Star Trek 4 first died after Star Trek Beyond (2016) only broke even at the box office. Bad Reboot tried to talk Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth into working for less money. They said, no.
It has been repeatedly announced ever since then. They invariably fall apart.
The biggest problem Star Trek as a franchise has is that ridiculous contract Les Moonves signed with Secret Hideout. From the Arkhaven Blog:
“Les Moonves had a great relationship with Abrams and there was still blood in that aforementioned stone. While Moonves hates science fiction he loves money. So Bad Robot’s retarded little brother, Secret Hideout was given an ironclad production license which would last five years. Then Moonves got #MeTooed out of Hollywood.
Since it was owned directly by Viacom, Star Trek: Discovery would be (allegedly) canon. But since Bad Robot is a major stakeholder in Secret Hideout they are bound by Bad Robot’s original contract which requires any Star Trek they produce to be legally distinct (the number that gets floated around is “25% percent different”). This by the way is the real reason that C-3PO had a red arm in the Force Awakens. It made his action figures from that movie 25% different.
Now it pains me to be fair to Secret Hideout but I will grant this much. Original Star Trek was made in 1967-69. Each planet the Enterprise visited was so different from the next it was nearly an anthology series. The costumes are just plain silly by modern standards and can’t really be used today. The sets have the same problem. Besides, hard overhead lighting isn’t done anymore.
Fine. Changes needed to be made but dear god in heaven, it didn’t have to be made into something unwatchably bad.
Kurtzman doesn’t get Star Trek and he never will. Alex Kurtzman isn’t creative at all, he’s just a Hollywood politician. He’s been protected since his days on Hercules, and he’s failed upward ever since. While he doesn’t remotely understand Star Trek, he definitely understands Hollywood politics. The further Left he takes Star Trek, the more protected he is within the industry.
Bottomline, Secret Hideout’s Star Trek is a disaster and has significantly devalued the brand.
Recently, CBS/Viacom and Paramount were merged back together, and this actually made the situation with Star Trek worse.
Because of the terms of Secret Hideout’s license, Secret Hideout is now in charge of ALL Star Trek theatrical movies as well as the TV shows. The problem is that they can’t be trusted with any of them.
None of Kurtzman’s Star Trek projects, with the exception of a couple of cartoons, are getting any funding from Paramount/Viacom, and the outside sources have learned their lesson, there will be no more money coming from Amazon or Netflix. And Paramount can’t move forward with any Star Trek film projects without Kurtzman’s involvement.
This isn’t quite a stalemate because according to reasonably reliable sources, Secret Hideout and Bad Robot get paid millions in license fees from Paramount/Viacom even if the only thing they bring to the party is sitting on their butts for the next three years. And breaking the contract will result in a nine figure penalty fee paid by Paramount to Secret Hideout. Now all of this stuff is standard industry practice and no one would care in the least if Kurtzman was capable of producing a Star Trek that Star Trek fans like. But he can’t do that. It’s just beyond him.
In normal times, Paramount would just sit out the contract, pay the license fees and flip Kurtzman and company the bird in three years.
But these are the End-Times.
Any entertainment company that depends on theatrical exhibition for their films is in financial agony right now. It’s not just Disney. All of the studios are hurting and may never recover (one hopes). Right now any asset that is not making money is a liability.“
Consequently, Bad Robot can get away with an announcement without Paramount’s approval ahead of time. Abrams is too busy destroying what’s left of DC to worry about destroying what’s left of Star Trek himself, so he’s farming it out to WandaVision’s showrunner because everyone is pretending that WandaVision made a packet for Disney and it didn’t.
A couple of flavors of the month are signed as the WOMEN writers of this all too masculine franchise.
This whole thing smells like a funding pitch. And I hope that’s all it will be because if by some dark miracle it actually gets made then Kirk is going spend ninety minutes internalizing his misogyny and apologizing for it while Captain Uhura commands the Enterprise to victory over the patriarchy.
Yeah, it’s gonna suck.
