Poll Should CBS buy out Viacom's movie rights?

And here I thought Alec Peters called First Dibs on the movie rights!

 

Anyone with a camera, a few friends, and a place to film can do a movie in that sense, but a big budget movie like a Trek movie is another matter entirely. CBS isn't interested enough in making movies to invest that kind of money in them. They'd rather keep those dollars for their TV division and CBS All Access.

 

Exactly.

 

Based purely on the quality of production on display across 15 episodes and the Season 2 trailer, I think the Discovery production team are more than capable of doing a feature film. If they can produce 50 minutes of some of the most cinematic television ever created in a matter of days, I would think they'd be able to produce a 2-hour movie shot slowly and surely over 3 to 4 months. Also you forget the 2009 Star Trek movie was made by a television production company, not a movie production company.

 

Please see Rule of Acquisition 121

I was thinking that as well. Of course he did spend close to 1 billion on the new Tolkien series, and I doubt Snow Crash came cheaply, either. His pockets are deep but not infinite.

 

Question doesn't make sense. Right now CBS and Viacom are fighting over who will be the top dog in their impending merger (Moonves or Redstone?). Once the merger goes through the Star Trek film rights issue becomes moot - IOW, no money exchange necessary.

 

Well it's Amazon's money, so it's pretty close to infinite.

Bezos is a big Star Trek fan of course. He loves space sci-fi. Just bought The Expanse recently.

Amazon Prime Video is trying to compete against Netflix. I think they would both want the property and I think both of them would do a better job with it than CBS/Paramount.

 

Actually, that's not quite correct. Bad Robot is both a movie and TV production company--they made two theatrical films prior to Star Trek XI, so they weren't newbies to movies in 2009. But as far as the topic on hand, it's just a matter that TV and theatrical movies are two different businesses with two different business structures. They may look the same, but they're not because of the way they're set up and the monies involved. Although as I said earlier, anyone can do a movie if they have only a camera, so it's not about CBS not having the resources to do Trek movies, it's all about CBS wanting to do Trek movies. Given how little they've invested in their movie division over the last decade and how much almost of an afterthought it seems to be today, I'd say they're far more interested in doing new productions for CBS All Access.

 

No, don't rewrite history.

Cloverfield was released before Star Trek, but wasn't started until after work began on the 2009 film. The only film they released before that was a movie called Joy Ride, which was actually produced by Touchstone Television (now called ABC Studios) under the Bad Robot banner.

Bad Robot as an independent production company with its own offices and facilities didn't happen until 2005. Before that, it was Touchstone Television resources with Bad Robot branding on it.

That's why JJ doesn't have any creative say over any of his pre-Fringe and pre-Star Trek/Cloverfield projects. ABC Studios does. That's why they let others make awful sequels to Joyride.

 

I'm not rewriting history.

Joy Ride (2001) was Bad Robot's earliest foray into theatrical films.

Filming on Cloverfield began in June 2007. They didn't start filming Star Trek XI until November 2007 and were still filming it when Cloverfield was released in January 2008.

 

Yes, but it's not the same Bad Robot that exists today. It was just Touchstone Television done under JJ's producing leadership and his company name. He then split away from Touchstone Television and took that Bad Robot branding and turned it into its own production company, with deals with Paramount and Warner Bros. for movies and television respectively. Before that deal, it was just Touchstone Television pretending to be a company called Bad Robot, not an actual production company called Bad Robot. That's why there's no Bad Robot logo on Mission Impossible 3.

Star Trek was announced before, with JJ initially producing and then signing on to direct.

 

^^^

None of that really changes what I said, though. Bad Robot still had two films under its belt prior to Star Trek XI.

 

Why would CBS want to produce feature films when Paramount cuts them a big fat check every time they produce one? There is no financial risk to CBS with Paramount making the films. Much like there is no financial risk with Discovery because Netflix is footing much of the bill.

 

THIS. I too prefer every Trek production to be as unique as possible. When I try to articulate it though it usually pisses off the continuity pornographers.

Maybe you could answer:

Much is often made of the fact that Wrath of Khan was shot by Paramount's TV department.

Now exactly what this means is largely political and economical (I suspect), figures on paper as it were, or perhaps a question of who was overseeing how Harve Bennett spent his money or whom he hired with it. I.e., it didn't effect the film being shot anamophic for theatrical release or anything like that (although I know Meyer had to fight an uphill battle with the studio to get a real composer and orchestra hired rather than tracking TMP music or getting someone with a synthesizer). But now here's what I want to know.

At no point in this narrative, that I can find, has it ever been specified when (or if) this ever stopped being the case.

Were all the Star Trek movies, beginning with The Wrath of Khan and up through Nemesis, produced by the TV department?

 

I believe that is actually wrong. I think the intention was for it to be produced by the TV division, but it ended up being produced by their feature film division.

Maybe @Harvey or @Maurice could clarify? They seem to always have the inside scoop on these kinds of things.

 

It really stopped being the case in 2005 when Paramount Television was acquired by CBS. Prior to that, Paramount Television and Paramount Pictures were under the same Viacom umbrella and it was a no-brainer for people who worked on Star Trek (or other Paramount) TV shows to also work on the Star Trek movies. There was almost perfect synergy between them back then. It really wasn't until 2005 that we began talking about Star Trek TV and Star Trek movies as being made by separate companies with different people behind them.

Of course the irony is that we now have someone who worked on the last three Star Trek movies (Alex Kurtzman) now spearheading Star Trek TV productions for CBS All Access.

 

That makes sense. I kind of assumed that would be the case with the TNG films (except possibly Nemesis), but I also couldn't imagine a point where the TOS films (except possibly The Voyage Home) might have broken away from that. It makes sense if they never did.

 

My understanding is that it was shot by the Paramount TV Division. The de Forest Research memo from November 9, 1981 (day 1 of photography, I think) was addressed to “Paramount TV,” for example.

By the time they got to filming, I think this was mainly done as a cost saving measure. They were planning on a theatrical release at that point.

The Tenutos, who write about TWOK for the official Star Trek site regularly, would know all the details.

 

@BillJ Yeah, lots of misunderstanding around that. I'm more the TMP expert than on TWOK, but Paramount could have been hedging their bets and figuring they could do it as a TV movie if their didn't have confidence that it would be successful theatrically. TV division probably to prevent another TMP cost overrun, but the film was being shot widescreen from the get-go which suggests they always planned a theatrical release with TV release being an escape valve.

 

CBS OWNS the Star Trek film rights. They LICENSED them to Paramount and JJ Abrams. There's nothing for them to buys - they OWN it.

See these two links:
http://www.cbsconsumerproducts.com/properties.html

http://www.cbsconsumerproducts.com/startrek/star_trek_original.html