Tobar

Welp:

Remember how J.J. Abrams said the lawsuit against the ‘Star Trek: Axanar’ fan film had been dropped? Not quite.

If anyone in Hollywood would have the power to beam away a lawsuit involving sci-fi fans, J.J. Abrams, as a key custodian of both the “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” franchises, would be that guy.

At least that’s what you might think.

Late last year, Paramount Pictures and CBS filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the makers of a crowdfunded fan film called “Star Trek: Axanar,” news that hit diehard “Trek” fans like a photon torpedo. At a fan event in May for the upcoming movie “Star Trek Beyond,” Abrams – who directed the 2009 “Star Trek” big-screen reboot and its 2013 sequel and is producing the new Justin Lin-directed film – announced that with both his and Lin’s blessings, the lawsuit would soon be dropped.

“[Lin and I] started talking about it and realized this was not an appropriate way to deal with the fans,” Abrams told the crowd. “The fans should be celebrating this thing. Fans of ‘Star Trek’ are part of this world. So [Lin] went to the studio and pushed them to stop this lawsuit and now, within the next few weeks, it will be announced this is going away, and that fans would be able to continue working on their project.”

Abrams’ surprise announcement was welcome news to the makers of “Axanar.” Yet one month later, the lawsuit shows no signs of going away anytime soon. Last week, lawyers for Paramount and CBS informed a federal judge in California that their legal action was still pending, rejecting the defendants’ claims that the film was protected under fair use. For now, the fate of “Axanar” remains in limbo.

“Nothing has changed,” Robert Meyer Burnett, who is set to direct “Axanar” if it ever goes into production, told The Times last week. “It has been going through the court system exactly the same way it had been before [Abrams] made that announcement…. I think, unfortunately, the outcome ultimately is not going to be favorable to us and certainly not for our fans and our donors.” (A spokesperson for Paramount did not respond to a request for comment.)

Studios have long tolerated, and sometimes even supported, fan-made films as long as they don’t attempt to capitalize financially on copyrighted material. While such fan movies are usually decidedly modest, homemade affairs, the team behind “Axanar” raised more than $1.2 million through a crowdfunding campaign for what they billed as “the first fully professional, independent ‘Star Trek’ film.”

Still, despite those lofty ambitions, Burnett, who was not personally named in the suit, insists that the makers of “Axanar” have never sought to earn any money from the project. Those who donated $25 or more to the crowdfunding campaign were promised a digital download of the film, and all funds received were to go to production costs. “Ultimately, it was a movie that was paid for by donors that would be given away for free on the Internet,” said Burnett, a lifelong “Trek” fan who directed the 1999 film “Free Enterprise” and has written and produced behind-the-scenes extras for home video releases of the series “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Star Trek: Enterprise.”

Nor did they see the project competing in any way with a film like “Beyond.” “No matter how good ‘Axanar’ could be, I don’t think anyone would ever mistake it for an officially released ‘Star Trek’ movie that cost $150 million,” Burnett said. “If anything, we were going to make the ‘Sex, Lies, and Videotape’ of fan films, all the while honoring the ‘Star Trek’ franchise. No one is ever going to compete at the level that a Hollywood production can muster, although I’m very flattered to see that they’re threatened by us, because it makes me think we were doing something right.”

The “Axanar” lawsuit has divided the “Star Trek” fan community, with some cheering on what they see as a scrappy David taking on a corporate Goliath and others seeing the project as an overreach that threatens the entire world of fan films.

“Everyone thinks that because of this we might bring the era of fan films down to a crashing end – we’ve nuked fan films forever,” Burnett said. “To me, that’s the worst thing in the world if people think that of us.”

Still, he holds out hope that in the end, the “Axanar” team will be vindicated both in the legal system and in the court of public opinion.

“If they can point to us and say, ‘These guys pursued their dream relentlessly in the face of overwhelming odds and stayed together as friends and colleagues and were able to succeed’ – what is more ‘Star Trek’ than that?”

John Carpenter came to town last night for a Live Retrospective concert. Twas awesome. I ended up purchasing the LP of his first album:

Just saw the news about Yelchin, how tragic. =(

Actor Anton Yelchin, 27, who played Chekov in recent “Star Trek” movies, was killed in a freak accident early Sunday morning, police told CNN.

Yelchin, who also acted in “Like Crazy” and “Alpha Dog,” died outside his home in Los Angeles, according to law enforcement.

Yelchin stepped out of his car in the driveway of his Studio City home at around 1:10 a.m. PT when the car slid backwards and pinned him against a brick pillar and a security fence, causing trauma that led to his death, said Jennifer Houser with the Los Angeles Police Department.

“The victim was on his way to meet his friends for a rehearsal and when he didn’t show up, his friends went to his house where they found him deceased by his car,” Houser told CNN. “It appears that he momentarily left his car, leaving it in the driveway. He was behind the vehicle when it rolled backward and pinned him to the brick pillar causing the trauma that led to his death.”

Houser says Yelchin’s family was notified by the friends that found him. She did not know whether the car was running when he was found.

Hey you wanna take that to the politics thread or something?

TV’s Frink said:

You told me they were Flounders.

YOU LIED TO ME

I told you Flounders was one of the impolite names for that generation. *gesticulates with his fist as if he were still talking*

Do not take that link as an endorsement of any kind toward that show. I’m like a digital magpie that collects little clips and images that may or may not become relevant in the future.

I could just as easily go into a small rant about Seth MacFarlane as I did for Snyder. =P

They haven’t announced it but there’s a possibility that Simon Pegg provided the VO for Dengar.

haha…

In Hollywood you’re only as good as your last film. 300 was Snyder’s only success up to that point. After that it was disappointment after disappointment. From that perspective, with Sucker Punch being the complete sucker punch that it was at the box office, he should never have landed MoS in the first place. But he obviously has friends in the right places.

Actually the totals I gave included the worldwide box office.

The domestic totals minus the foreign box office break down to:

• Watchmen - $107 million
• Sucker Punch - $36 million

Which paints an even uglier picture, which I didn’t need to do when the combined gross of foreign and domestic for both was ugly enough.

Just as a head’s up, from a sociological perspective, anyone currently at the age of 18 or younger is considered a “Plural” or Gen-Z and not a Millenial.

Millenials were the last generation before this current internet age.

It was all worth it for the long con!

Zack Snyder’s last two action films before Man of Steel were both serious under performers. Watchmen barely made a profit, with a $130 million production budget it managed to take in $185 million. Meanwhile, Sucker Punch with a production budget of $82 million, barely made $89 million which is gonna be a loss for the studio once you factor in whatever the promotional budget was.

He has a consistent track record of middling performance at the box office. Not the ideal candidate to hand your multi-billion dollar franchise to. Which Warner Brothers has finally learned as they’ve quietly moved him more toward a producer role while giving Ben Affleck more agency in his place.

They could have given the film to Uwe Boll and it would have made as much. That all has to do with the subject matter, the director was not at all the draw for that film. And as they learned after the massive second weekend drop off, you do actually have to make a good movie to have any kind of staying power.

suspiciouscoffee said:

Yeah, at least Donner had respect for some version of the character (that seemingly being Silver/Bronze Age). Snyder seems to hate all versions of Superman through the years to the point where he is hell bent on ruining Superman for everyone as we stand helpless to do anything about it.

These quotes sum up Snyder’s view of super heroes:

Zack Snyder said:

You could call it “high-brow” comics, but to me, that comic book was just pretty sexy! I had a buddy who tried getting me into “normal” comic books, but I was all like, “No one is having sex or killing each other. This isn’t really doing it for me.” I was a little broken, that way. So when Watchmen came along, I was, “This is more my scene.”

Everyone says that about [Christopher Nolan’s] Batman Begins. “Batman’s dark.” I’m like, okay, “No, Batman’s cool.” He gets to go to a Tibetan monastery and be trained by ninjas. Okay? I want to do that. But he doesn’t, like, get raped in prison. That could happen in my movie. If you want to talk about dark, that’s how that would go.

Why DC ever handed over the cinematic keys to him, I’ll never know.

I recommend using imgur for all your photo hosting needs.

Shouldn’t be that complicated since they’re just babies throughout that trilogy right? My version of this is probably the more complicated one, where I replace Dash Rendar and Leebo in Shadows of the Empire with Kyle Katarn and Jan Ors.

Lord Haseo said:

I think they handled it pretty well despite the shitty premise. The “duel” would have been less than 10 seconds if it were in film or TV and it sewed the seeds of Vader finding out he had a son. Though he could have found that out some other way such as having looking at Luke through a security recording and seeing his old lightsaber and putting two and two together later on.

Meh, it was awful. Vader’s quest for the pilot who destroyed the Death Star in the original Marvel run was pretty epic. Through multiple issues he hunted down any leads he could find to discover the name of the pilot before he finally succeeded:

I wouldn’t get too hyped. They screen the films every Celebration. Last year’s had the premiere of AOTC and ROTS in 3D.

Earl said:

I missed a majority of E3, were there any embarrassing moments worth mentioning? At this point I barely watch E3 for the games anyway.

Here you go.

Well this is some exciting news. Back when the idea of Sony rebooting Spider-Man for the third time was a real possibility, many people suggested that Donald Glover should become the newest incarnation of the character, but instead of the classic version of Peter Parker, that Sony should adapt Miles Morales to the big screen. That has obviously not been the case, and after Tom Holland‘s performance in Captain America: Civil War, it is hard to argue that Sony and Marvel made the wrong choice. That said, Glover has previously expressed his desire to play the character and while that probably won’t ever happen for him, he is going to be involved with the universe.

The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that Glover is in talks to join Spider-Man: Homecoming in an unknown role, with Deadline (also claiming the exclusive mysteriously enough) reporting that he is joining, seeming as the deal has already closed. No word has come out just yet about who he could be playing but getting someone as charismatic as Glover to be involved is always great. He joins Michael Keaton, Zendaya, Tony Revolori, Laura Harrier, Kenneth Choi, and Michael Barbieri as the supporting characters in the film, with Robert Downey Jr. and Marisa Tomei returning as Tony Stark and Aunt May respectively.

Lord Haseo said:

I wouldn’t mind Link being an actual character this time around. I know for the longest we were supposed to project ourselves onto Link but having him at least talking what freshen things up a bit.

Be careful what you wish for…

Seeing it projected in 70MM IMAX was absolutely stunning. I feel bad for everyone that missed out on that experience.

TV’s Frink said:
I would have pointed this out privately if I could have thought of a way to do it.

DIFFERENT THREAD

Star Wars
Original Marvel Star Wars (up until the ROTJ adaptation)
Star Wars newspaper strip
The Star Wars Holiday Special
Han Solo at Stars’ End
Han Solo’s Revenge
Han Solo and the Lost Legacy
Star Wars Radio Adaptation
Rebel Mission to Ord Mantell
The Empire Strikes Back
The Empire Strikes Back Radio Adaptation
Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu
Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon
Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of ThonBoka
Return of the Jedi
The Caravan of Courage
The Battle For Endor
Star Wars: Droids: The Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO
Star Tours