Paramount’s Lawsuit Against ‘Star Trek’ Fan Film ‘Axanar’ No Longer A Concern
Just before 2016 began, the producers of a crowdfundedStar Trekfan film calledAxanarreceived some bad news in the form ofa lawsuit from Paramount Pictures. At the core of all the legal mumbo jumbo, the lawsuit claimed ,“TheAxanarWorks infringe Plaintiffs' works by using innumerable copyrighted elements ofStar Trek, including its settings, characters, species, and themes.” It was a brutal blow to the fan film community, especially one as loyal as Trekkies.
Thankfully, some sense seems to have been talked into Paramount Pictures thanks to new franchise producerJ.J. AbramsandStar Trek BeyonddirectorJustin Lin, and theStar Trak Axanarlawsuit will be dropped very soon. Find out more after the jump.
During theStar Trek Beyondevent (where the new trailer was unveiledalong with news of apremiere of the film at Comic-Conthis summer), Abrams brought up the lawsuit in question, and here’s what he had to say (viaio9):
A few months back there was a fan film, Axonar, that was getting made and there was this lawsuit that happened between the studio and these fans and Justin, I’ll tell the story because he probably wouldn’t, was sort of outraged by this as a long time fan. We started talking about it and realized this was not an appropriate way to deal with the fans.
The fans should be celebrating this thing. Fans of Star Trek are part of this world. So he went to the studio and pushed them to stop this lawsuit and now, within the next few weeks, it will be announced this is going away, and that fans would be able to continue working on their project.
This is not only good news for producerAlec Petersand the team trying to makeAxanar, but also for any fans who may want to make larger scale fan films. This lawsuit could have set a precedent for studios to sue any fans trying to crowdfund any projects using intellectual property owned by a corporation. Even though these fans aren’t looking to make a profit off their films, for some reason, Paramount thought this larger production may be a problem. for them.
As for theAxanarteam’s reaction, they’re still waiting to celebrate until they get official word from Paramount that this lawsuit is dead:
While we’re grateful to receive the public support of JJ Abrams and Justin Lin, as the lawsuit remains pending, we want to ensure we go through all the proper steps to make sure all matters are settled with CBS and Paramount. Our goal from the beginning of this legal matter has been to address the concerns of the plaintiffs in a way that still allows us to tell the story of AXANAR and meets the expectations of the over 10,000 fans who financially supported our project.
There is still a lot of work to do, but receiving this kind of public support helps immensely.
HopefullyAxanaris really allowed to make their fan film and the rest of the community isn’t scared of following through with their own projects in the future.
