I'd be worried about Star Trek if CBS/Paramount started treating it the way WB has been treating their DC cinematic universe. That is...dump your whole toybox on the floor at once and hope the toys land coherently.
^ This. CBS will move forward with another Good Wife, Madam Secretary or NCIS spinoff. Discovery isn't quite the series I would have produced, but I'm rooting for it to succeed, if nothing else because that may open the door for another series set in a more preferred era (25th-century, for example)
Gotta say, I think they CBS is misreading the fandom majorly in their promo footage with the agonizing emphasis not only on pure action, but also the one-character focus on Michael. Who that loves Star Trek has ever been into it for a single personality as opposed to the ensemble relationship? Blecch.
And I don't MIND if this new series isn't slavish to fandom (see the new Star Wars movies for examples of what happens when your let the Wookies run the asylum), but there are SOME things that make Trek "Trek", and you can't veer too far from them and still connect with the spirit of the whole... ahem....enterprise.
No argument here, but it remains to be seen how the spirit of DSC connects to the rest of Trek. But, it is hard to determine that spirit of a work from a marketing trailer.
The current owners have to be willing to sell and CBS isn't going to. So you can hope discovery fails so somebody else buys it but the changes of that are really really small. Now I will admit I was hoping for F4 to fail so marvel could get the rights back but that is a very different kind of deal where if they don't make a F4 moves the rights automatically revert. CBS can not make new star trek and make money on the hours of stuff that already have for years and they would.
a) not going to happen b) CBS is not going to hire AP no matter how much his supporters want them to.
Even a greatly devalued franchise would still cost so much that caring for it will not be a factor. It would be a pure business decision, and in making it profitable, appealing to a declining, aging and fractious fanbase is bad business. The only way to make a failed franchise profitable is to bring in new fans, and that usually involves burning some old ones. Be careful what you wish for.
There was a new Star Trek production last year. CBS and Paramount are making plenty of money off of Star Trek, and it's not going to be sold to anyone else.
Barely can be measured, would be my assessment. CBS knows that Star Trek makes it money, and it is one of their cornerstone profits. CBS, as a company, is more cautious than other companies, and would not be likely to offload such a property.
One thing I notice is narrow-mindedness. Some fans think that Star Trek is only profitable if there are only new series or movies being produced. Trust me, CBS could make more money if they produced nothing new and just brought money in from marketing what's already out there. With every book, DVD, shirt, cap, salt and pepper shakers sold, they make money. And from a product that's sometimes 51 years old, they make nothing but profit. Something like that you do not sell off. Think of when Ted Turner bought the MGM and classic film libraries. He did nothing but make money from every piece of Gone With The Wind or Citizen Kane item sold. Didn't have to put out another dime to make that money back.
He can't even make a 15-minute fan film, and this after failing to make a 90-minute movie. AP's Star Trek would consist of a few trailers, a bunch of failing side projects and a never ending wait.
I was thinking about this the other day and started to wonder about just how effectively an Anothology series might work. Each season have a different focus each one dealing with incidents that have been mentioned or hinted at in the past but about which we know so little. This would require the production company needing to get the full rights to the franchise in order to show us everything that ties in with the established canon, though with characters who aren't younger versions of the main cast from other shows (no Young Adventures of Jean-Luc Picard for example). The anthology could touch on the likes of the Columbia during the Romulan War, the final mission of the Essex, the S.C.E. specialists sent to help restore Qo'noS after the destruction of Praxis, the Tomed Incident, the Cardassian Wars, the science team unlocking the secrets of the Dyson Sphere, etc. They could bring in some characters who we're familiar with (personally I'd love to see Alynna Nechayev fighting the Cardassians either on Starfleet Intelligence black ops or commanding a starship) but also make sure that we had plenty of original and engaging people to get behind--some of whom could also provide a link from one season to the next. I know the cost of such a series would mean that we'll never see it, but it could be so many different things to different people. Some might not like another all-out war against the Romulans but may love the political thriller of stablising the Klingon homeworld. Just a thought.
Why are Americans hostile to the subscription model? Are there good reasons that might bring about a fair sense of dislike, but outright hostility?
Not likely, but not impossible. Franchises do get sold (or even entire studios). Disney would not be in the position it's in without having purchased Marvel and Star Wars (or Pixar before it).
No, nothing is impossible. But, CBS didn't have to put any money forward for the longest time with Star Trek and still made money off of licensing and media sales.
I don't think it's lunacy for Star Trek fans to have goals and desires for a series. Lunacy is writers making a series that "they like" and not take the fans into account. Star Trek exists and was made great because the fans loved it. When they strayed from what made Star Trek great, they had some very unpopular shows and movies. It's not that they need to cater to people over 40, but those people fell in love with Trek when they WERE in the demographic that studios want, and a lot of Star Trek, the best of it, is timeless. The story in City on the Edge for example, or The Visitor, or Inner Light--all of those stories would make compelling TV no matter what era.
Ask fans what makes Star Trek great, and you'll get many different answers. Plenty of fans will tell you that DS9 is their favourite series, yet that is the series which lost more viewers over its run than any other. Star Trek was saved by a writer who didn't like a number of aspects of TOS. He put a significantly different spin on it - to the point of, in his own words, breaking Roddenberry's mould. As he says, "art is a dictatorship, not a democracy." I'd much rather watch something written by people following their own vision, rather than trying to cater to what they believe fans want (which would not be representative of all fans, and possibly not even a majority).