Exactly as many speculated: “As part of our ongoing optimization of CBS operations, CBS Films will be folded into the larger CBS Entertainment Group over the course of 2019. This will allow the company to further focus its entertainment resources on its television, digital and streaming businesses. Prior to shifting its focus to streaming-centered content, the division will continue to execute their distribution and marketing strategies in support of forthcoming releases Five Feet Apart, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Pavarotti and Lexi. We are grateful for the continued leadership of Terry Press and the passionate efforts of everyone at CBS Films.” https://deadline.com/2019/01/cbs-films-folded-into-cbs-entertainment-group-1202534009/ If Paramount's movie rights lapse, could we start getting CBS-produced films instead?
Paramount have the rights to make/distribute Trek movies in perpetuity. It's not a contract they paid for, it's complicated joint-ownership as a result of corporate silliness. Many people are confused since Bad Robot, who made the last 3 Trek movies for Paramount, have a contract which expires 2020. After this, Paramount will find someone else to make Trek movies for them to distribute.
CBS Films isn't much to write home about, IMO. IIRC, it's a fairly small outfit with only a handful of employees and not much muscle in Hollywood. Small- to medium-budget movies are their thing. It couldn't really fill the void left when Viacom left and took Paramount Pictures with them.
Is there any reason they couldn't just partner with CBS Entertainment Group to do it? Joint productions happen all the time. Consider the MCU Spider-Man films, which are Sony-owned and distributed but made in partnership with Marvel Studios.
Nothing in the article even implies what your thread title says. This article also has nothing to do with Star Trek other than being about CBS.
This is a potential nightmare for the brand of Star Trek from the horrible parent owner which is CBS: a manufacturing plant of TV programming; just keep throwing sh*t at the wall and hoping it'll stick. I can see CBS mass producing tons of lame, fat budgeted Trek streaming movies for their All Access which would hurt the motion picture front for Paramount. I think it's healthy when the brands are separate where an independent company can only focus on one thing than multiple things. Hollywood never wants to be first but second; CBS is trying desperately to garner Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe, which of course a lot of silly studios are desperately trying to do and failing, and I don't think Star Trek is a vessel for it because it's a niche product. I'm not sure it helps the motion picture element if general audiences starts to believe Star Trek is not worth seeing on the big screen. CBS is not Netflix, they're more Roger Corman* but with the mindset of spending big loads of cash for their awful, accelerated programming. *Corman was a low budget filmmaker but what was widely known of him was quickly getting product out there despite a lack of substance. CBS mass producing multiple Trek shows and now movies will only ware out the brand faster than it is. CBS programming is soulless.
The ending to S1 was shit, but I wouldn't say Discovery was soulless at all. It had some very touching moments between Burnham and Tyler on the Shenzhou before Tyler lost it entirely.
"Dark Frontier" was promoted as a Voyager telemovie back in 1999. I think any film put out by CBS All Access would be similar. Just a TV movie. The Khan mini-series would actually seem like it would be a good fit for this type of "movie". A Discovery story outside of the series normal scope could be covered in one of these CBS All Access movies too. Similar to Short Treks but larger in scale.
This, except they could still see limited theatrical release for superfans to enjoy on the big screen. I reckon if CBS wants to do a TOS reboot as the follow-up to Discovery, it'll be a movie.
Man, I miss the Voyager "2 part movies" soooo much. I think there was another one besides Dark Frontier iirc, can't remember which one though. Maybe Year of Hell?
"Year of Hell" worked better being aired over two weeks. As soon as I heard "temporal weapons", I knew everything would be reset like "Yesterday's Enterprise" but it was great having that situation at least linger for a week. I get a bigger kick out of it now than I did back then because when I see Annarox, all I can think of is Red Foreman from That '70s Show as a Star Trek Villain. "I'm gonna stick my foot up Starfleet's ass!"
Hell or High Water was pretty dang good. Had some guy named Chris Pine in it, too. Not sure where I've seen him before, but it rings a bell.
CBS Films wasn't really involved with the making of that movie, though. They picked up the rights to it in the US, but other companies were actually involved in its production.