Seconded. a) it's getting out of hand. b) it's emboldening the broad and lofty language coming from the people behind the fan films (and not always in a good way) c) there are far better things for people to spend their money on.
I'm sure there are other reasons - William Shatner and Jonathan Frakes are both older and less attractive than Young, and neither of them have done one yet.
I was tossing money at that Starship Exeter on the promise of "Making of" DVDs before Kickstarter even existed. I'm glad it didn't get shut down. Oh, c'mon. There isn't a person on this forum who hasn't wasted money some silly piece of Star Trek nonsense at one point or another. The folks at CBS have been incredibly generous in letting the fans pool resources to get these things made. Just this year I've gotten to see "Kitumba," "The Tressaurian Intersection," and "Fairest of Them All." It's astounding. Regarding the topic: CBS isn't going to turn any fan film into a series. And I'd be incredibly surprised if they used a Kickstarter campaign of their own to fund an actual TV movie, miniseries or pilot. But I was also surprised when Warner Bros. Kickstarted the Veronica Mars movie. So, what do I know?
I hadn't been actively following these fan productions and I've seen a smattering of them recently. I will say that the quality is increasing. The sets, the production design, the effects...it's all very good, and I admire the people that put this stuff together. It's just....I can't get into it. I saw "Kitumba" and although I knew I was watching a semi-amateur production and tried to look at it in the spirit of TOS, the guy who played Kirk (who I know is the guy in charge of the thing) is just poorly cast and there were times where I wanted to skip forward. Then I watched the trailers for Star Trek Renegades. Despite the talent involved, it's not a premise I would be interested in. If that was the planned pilot they wanted to pitch to CBS, it would've been dead on arrival I think. Axanar, on the other hand, looks quite intriguing.
Well in the case of Veronica Mars, I think it was more like WB gauging whether it was worth making a "cult" show into a film. Fans yell and scream on the internet but will they actually use money to turn a profit on a film? Is it worth it putting up money to finance a feature based on a show canceled after 3 years? Universal learned that lesson the hard way in 2005 when Serenity flopped so hard. So many fans yelling and screaming online, people buying the Firefly DVDs...it looked like a safe bet to give Joss Whedon $39m to play with. And then it didn't even make that amount back with domestic and global grosses combined. Ouch. Of course Veronica Mars would always be cheaper to make than a SciFi flick, but the Kickstarter was a way to see if fans would put their money where their mouths were. Star Trek has a built-in fanbase and CBS knows that. But they're also the "most-watched network" and used to shows tons of people watch. For them to finance a new series, it better be a professional, awesome concept.
What interesting is a Star Trek series will never survive on the CBS network, the rating expectations are just way to high it could never work. CBS would have to make the show and put it on a cable network or perhaps the CW. This is what made the Netflix rumors (albeit false rumors) interesting as it gave CBS a viable outlet Star Trek.
This works under the assumption that CBS wants new Star Trek. They may be happy just collecting the licensing fees from the movies/merchandising and the syndication of the already filmed shows. Star Trek on TV may be something that they are simply not ready to move on yet and may not be ready for, for a very long time.
You can only get so much blood out of a stone, the old series (and Movies 1-10) are going to bring in less and less every year. They enjoy some gains from the licensing deal with Paramount (Viacom) for the last 2 Abrams films. So if you own a franchise as big as Star Trek you need to milk it for all its worth. If Universal or Disney owned the Star Trek franchise do you think they would just be sitting on it, I doubt it. CBS is really not the best entity to own Star Trek IMO, but it is what it is.
Well, CBS has managed to get a lot of blood out of this particular stone, and as much as I hate to say it, it could be many years before we see Star Trek return to TV.
When something feels too good to be true, it usually is. Crowdfunding feels to me like a bubble. Crowdfunding fan-films feels like a bubble on top of a bubble. I don't know when or how either of these bubbles will pop, but I think they will. It's just too much of an all-you-can-eat buffet right now.
I'm actually pleased at the way CBS is handling Star Trek. I'd rather get a decent movie every three or four years than have them pump out mediocre material like Paramount did in the 90's.
Paramount's biggest mistake was expecting Star Trek to be its main anchor show for the network without a second strong anchor available.
Paramount even wanting to start their own network on Free T.V. suggests to me a lack of forward thinking, altogether. Relying on STAR TREK was very secondary to that, in my opinion. The sort of traditional relationship between television and viewership was beginning to change, even then.
Sean Young found herself in this situation because she did stupid things (think Katherine Heigl-level stupid) when she was a hot young thing, and her career suffered for it.