Has Trek ever tried to court any Directors (Capital "D")?

[Kegek]

Re: Has Trek ever tried to court any Directors (Capital "D")

^
As far as that goes I'd speak in terms of 'interesting failures'. Strange, ambituous films that for all their faults are hardly banal, and often have a lot of individual elements that are exceptional. David Lynch's Dune is a classic example for me.

 

[Christopher]

blockaderunner said:
Why didn't they ever put the call out to a Spielberg or Ridley Scott or James Cameron to handle a Trek movie instead of directors on the tail end of their careers (TMP), in-house people too familiar with the material (Nimoy, Frakes, etc.) and people who have no business in a director's chair (Baird)?

This just came up on another board... I'm quoting now from writer/producer Zack Stentz (Andromeda, Sarah Connor Chronicles):

Sherry Lansing's regime was notorious for cheaping out on everything, spending money on mid-budget Ashley Judd legal thrillers and refusing to pay more than 60 million dollars for anything they didn't co-finance with another studio (Paramount thought they were being so smart by limiting their contribution to Titanic to that number as the budget exploded-- unfortunately for them, they also capped their profit participation, so Fox reaped nearly the entire windfall.) Despite their outer space settings, the post-TMP Star Trek films were very much low budget, um, enterprises.
...
But Paramount's current administration is much more willing to spend, spend, spend, to compete with the other major studios. And it's worth repeating that this is the first Star Trek film since the first one which is going to really get treated like an A-list Hollywood blockbuster, with a huge budget and top of the line talent behind the camera instead of an actor or someone Paramount owed a favor (Nemesis was Stuart Baird's reward for saving Tomb Raider in the editing room.)

http://www.exisle.net/mb/index.php?showtopic=50987&view=findpost&p=1087566

Of course, if ST '09 does well, then Abrams will probably be asked to do at least two more. But if he then moves on, and if Paramount continues to be willing to treat Star Trek as a big-budget blockbuster franchise, then some serious names might be courted.

 

[Data Holmes]

Re: Has Trek ever tried to court any Directors (Capital "D")

Kegek said:

Rico said:
A great director can't make a bad script good.

Depends on his script control and how good a rewriter he is. If memory serves, Nick Meyer did an extensive but uncredited rewrite on TWOK's script.

Basically there was something like six completed drafts of the scrips, non of which looked alike.

Meyer took them all and took every point, line, ect that he liked, tossed the rest, and pieced them together with his own bits of writing... And this was a week or so before the production was set to start I believe. Basically, Meyer was told that there wasn't enough time to work out a contract. Meyer said, fine I will do it without credit them, because I need a script.

If I remember the story correctly.

 

[OptimusPete]

Re: Has Trek ever tried to court any Directors (Capital "D")

^ do you know any details about the six scripts? I'm always interested in seeing how thyings might have turned out but didn't.

 

[Data Holmes]

Re: Has Trek ever tried to court any Directors (Capital "D")

OptimusPete said:
^ do you know any details about the six scripts? I'm always interested in seeing how thyings might have turned out but didn't.

Most of my info came from the special TWOK edition of STM... which is buried away in a box someone right now.

 

[jayrath]

Re: Has Trek ever tried to court any Directors (Capital "D")

Robert Wise wasn't good enough?

Gee, I suppose they could have asked Orson Welles -- who did the voice over for the TMP trailer -- but then TMP would never have been finished.

 

[Mike Farley]

Re: Has Trek ever tried to court any Directors (Capital "D")

Certainly by the time of the TNG movies I doubt Berman would have been willing to give up the amount of creative control an "A" list director would have demanded.

Edited to add: Hey! I'm a captain!

 

[Therin of Andor]

Re: Has Trek ever tried to court any Directors (Capital "D")

OptimusPete said:
^ do you know any details about the six scripts? I'm always interested in seeing how thyings might have turned out but didn't.

Discussed very briefly in "The Making of ST II" by Allan Asherman", IIRC.

There was, from memory:

* a story about a rogue weather-making machine (became Genesis)

* "The Omega Device" by Jack B. Sowards, involving the theft of the Federation's ultimate weapon (ditto)

* a sequel featuring the return of Khan from "Space Seed"

* Samuel A. Peeples' "Worlds That Never Were", with a male Vulcan called Dr Savik (became Saavik)

* a sequel with Dr Janet Wallace (of "The Deadly Years") and her young son (of Kirk), David Wallace (became Carol and David Marcus when it was realised Janet had a husband in TOS)

* something with Romulan ships crossing the Neutral Zone (using the existing Klingon ship footage from TMP; became part of Kobayashi Maru scenario)

and so on...

 

[Peach Wookiee]

Re: Has Trek ever tried to court any Directors (Capital "D")

Sweet information...

 

[FalTorPan]

Re: Has Trek ever tried to court any Directors (Capital "D")

jayrath said:
Robert Wise wasn't good enough?

Gee, I suppose they could have asked Orson Welles -- who did the voice over for the TMP trailer -- but then TMP would never have been finished.

Vejur was a SLED!!!

 

[Christopher]

Re: Has Trek ever tried to court any Directors (Capital "D")

Mike Farley said:
Certainly by the time of the TNG movies I doubt Berman would have been willing to give up the amount of creative control an "A" list director would have demanded.

But if Sherry Lansing had wanted to, she could've assigned Berman to other projects and turned the Trek movies over to other people. After all, she was his boss. But as discussed above, Paramount under her regime just didn't want to invest a lot of money in the Trek films, and hiring an A-list director would've required a lot more money than she was willing to spend -- not just for the director's salary, but to do the production on the level that an A-list director would expect. So instead Lansing just had the existing TV unit branch out into movies, since they were already on Paramount's payroll and were used to producing ST on a limited budget.

Which was actually a continuation of the tradition for Trek movies. Harve Bennett was chosen to produce the TOS movies after TMP because he was a seasoned television producer, accustomed to working on a tight budget and schedule and thus able to make the films far more cheaply than a feature-film producer could have. So when they switched to TNG movies, they basically traded off one TV producer for another.

 

[Kegek]

Re: Has Trek ever tried to court any Directors (Capital "D")

Mike Farley said:
Certainly by the time of the TNG movies I doubt Berman would have been willing to give up the amount of creative control an "A" list director would have demanded.

He wasn't even that accomodating to Nimoy, one of the directors considered for Generations. Nimoy refused because he would have no script or story control and would have to essentially shoot the Braga/Moore script as written.

 

[Data Holmes]

Re: Has Trek ever tried to court any Directors (Capital "D")

Kegek said:

Mike Farley said:
Certainly by the time of the TNG movies I doubt Berman would have been willing to give up the amount of creative control an "A" list director would have demanded.

He wasn't even that accomodating to Nimoy, one of the directors considered for Generations. Nimoy refused because he would have no script or story control and would have to essentially shoot the Braga/Moore script as written.

It's sort of the same reason why Nick Meyer wasn't the director of NEM... Berman went to him, and Meyer was set to do it, but wouldn't without the ability to do a script polish/rewrite... Unfortunately, berman had already guaranteed Logan in his contract that he would have final say on the script (god knows why), and Meyer backed out of the running. Berman was set to let Levar Burton direct and had already started to set up contracts when he was ordered by someone higher than him in the studio that they had secured Baird to direct.

 

[Balrog]

Re: Has Trek ever tried to court any Directors (Capital "D")

hutt359 said:

OptimusPete said:
^ do you know any details about the six scripts? I'm always interested in seeing how thyings might have turned out but didn't.

Most of my info came from the special TWOK edition of STM... which is buried away in a box someone right now.

Shatner basically confirms this in his "Star Trek Movie Memoirs".