A full-fledged film? No chance. But a script written by a fan that's pitched and goes through the proper channels? Sure. It's already happened.
It's always impossible until it happens. I wouldn't rule it out. If they can't purchase it, they can remake it. They can hire the talent they liked in that film and do another feature with them. It doesn't even need to go through the proper channels, if it's the right guy who sees the right film at the right time. The wrong person might shut the project down, the right person might do something with it. Etc etc bla bla.
I wouldn't say it's a complete impossibility. But it's close enough to impossible that I'd have to say no. There are far too many legal and practical issues to make it in any way an attractive idea to the studio.
Simply based on rational thinking: NO! The arguments against it have been laid out en masse. Here on TrekBBS, too. Some production teams, as of late have, generated a lot of noise regarding this topic, but that's been just to catch the purses of dreaming fans. Hell, I almost congratulate them for actually raising money through Kickstarter & co. But to be honest: A Fan Film will always be this: A film made by fans for fans. If there are people who can be legally brought to spending money for those projects - good for the production teams like Axanar or Renegades. But to think, it could reach the realms of the TV industry? Simply astonishing that there are still enough naive human beings who actually BELIEVE it could happen... Hell, there would be a much, much higher chance, that William Shatner stars in one of their fan films...
I don't think it's entirely out of the bounds of possibility that someone who has worked on a fanfilm might get hired by a studio on the basis of work they'd done, but that's about the only realistic prospect, and even that's a long shot.
The idea that a studio may see some talent in the wild and hire them to script a show is within the realm of very low but nonzero probability. The idea that they will do this with a massive, expensive to produce, existing franchise is zero. What superfans want from Star Trek isn't what will make the studios millions of dollars off of it anyway. There may be some scenario where a studio sees some talent in a fan production and requests a pilot for an original series similar to Trek. Or, if one of these fan productions became so big it was household knowledge, that's what it would take for the idea to even cross their minds.
But in Jirin's example, it wouldn't be Star Trek, so the idea of bringing back the show as a series gets further delayed.
There is one other thing I could maybe see happening: If there was a popular enough fan film that tied into a professional film well enough, maybe they would pay a pittance or make some other arrangement to include it as a bonus on a DVD. Like, say, some really talented fan group made a movie out of Countdown to Darkness leading up to Into Darkness. But still, long short. Probably longer than what USS Intrepid mentioned. Sure. It might also be the year of LCARS on the desktop! (For those not in on the joke: For about 20 years or more, now, some Linux enthusiasts have declared that the new year will be the Year of Linux on the Desktop. And you can see how true that has been. )
For the fans to take back Star Trek they would need to all start buying everything they see in a commercial en masse.
Fans have never owned Star Trek - not for an instant, ever. Aside from which, rumors being bandied about on the Internet about something brewing at CBS regarding fan films or a "prime universe" project are...misleading and incorrect, to put it diplomatically. We shall see what we shall see, my friend.
Well, as you may know: I resist arguing semantics... ...but the nature of your polarity is more clear (glass half-empty, etc...) I must Thank You for the somewhat more respectful approach... i bow to you, sir
My position has always been that I don't care if it is half-full, half-empty, neither, or both, I just want to know who the hell drank half my drink.