User:Oldag07/Sandbox2

TO DO:

• Add Introduction. .
• Add stuff on Star Trek conventions?
• Add stuff on Star Trek novels?
• Expand on Roddenberry/ Rick B.
• Merge Franchise ownership paragraph into prose.
• Decide on title: History of Star Trek. History of Star Trek Franchise. Production history of Star Trek???
• Remove excess stuff off main Star Trek Page.
• To start new page, remove this to do list, and move this sandbox directly.

The history of the Star Trek Franchise . . . .

Beginnings

A longtime fan of science fiction, in 1964 Gene Roddenberry put together a proposal for Star Trek, a science fiction television series set on board a large interstellar space ship dedicated to exploring the galaxy. Some influences Roddenberry noted were A. E. van Vogt's tales of the Space Beagle, Eric Frank Russell's Marathon stories, and the 1956 science fiction film Forbidden Planet. Parallels have also been drawn with the 1954 TV sci-fi series Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, a much less sophisticated space opera that nevertheless included many of the elements—organization, crew relationships, missions, elements of bridge layout, and even some technology—that made up Star Trek. Roddenberry also drew heavily from the Horatio Hornblower novels depicting a daring sea captain exercising broad discretionary authority on distant missions of noble purpose; his Kirk character was more or less Hornblower in space. Roddenberry had extensive experience in writing westerns that were particularly popular television fare at the time, and pitched the show to the network as a "Wagon Train to the stars."

In 1964, Roddenberry secured a three-year development deal with leading independent TV production company Desilu (founded by comedy stars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz). In Roddenberry's original concept, the protagonist was named Captain Robert April of the "S.S. Yorktown". Eventually, this character became Captain Christopher Pike. The first pilot episode, "The Cage", was made in 1964, with actor Jeffrey Hunter in the role of Pike after Roddenberry's first choice, Lloyd Bridges had reportedly turned it down.

At a time when racial segregation was still firmly entrenched in many areas of the United States, Roddenberry envisaged a multi-racial and mixed-gender crew, based on his assumption that racial prejudice and sexism would not exist in the 23rd century. He also included recurring characters from alien races, including Spock, who was half human and half Vulcan, united under the banner of the United Federation of Planets.

Other Star Trek features involved solutions to basic production problems. The idea of the faster-than-light warp drive was not new to science fiction, but it allowed a narrative device that permitted the Enterprise to quickly traverse space. The matter transporter, by which crew members "beamed" from place to place, solved the problem of moving characters quickly from the ship to a planet, a spacecraft landing sequence for each episode being prohibitively expensive. The famous flip-open communicator was introduced as a plot device to strand the characters in challenging situations by malfunctioning, being lost or stolen, or out of range.

The Star Trek concept was first offered to the CBS network, but the channel turned it down for the more mainstream Irwin Allen production, Lost In Space. Star Trek was then offered to NBC, who commissioned and then turned down the first pilot, saying it was 'too cerebral'. However, the NBC executives were favorably impressed with the concept (and realising that the faults were partly due to the script they had selected) and made the unusual decision to commission a second pilot: "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Only the character of Spock (played by Leonard Nimoy) remained from the original pilot, and only two cast members (Majel Barrett and Leonard Nimoy) carried on to the series. Much of the first pilot's footage was ingeniously re-used in the later two-part episode, "The Menagerie".

An interesting note concerning NBC's interest in Star Trek: as told by Herb Solow, Executive in Charge of Production at Desilu, NBC was looking for series that would take full advantage of the new color TV technology. NBC was owned by RCA, the leader in manufacturing color televisions, and sought to sell more TVs by creating interest through its NBC network.

The second pilot introduced the main characters: Captain Kirk (William Shatner), chief engineer Lieutenant Commander Scott (James Doohan) and Lieutenant Sulu (George Takei). Sulu's title in this episode was Ship's Physicist (changed to Helmsman in subsequent episodes). Paul Fix played Dr. Mark Piper in the second pilot. Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy, (DeForest Kelley) joined the cast when principal photography began on the first season, along with Yeoman Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney) and communications officer Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols.) Majel Barrett's role of Nurse Christine Chapel would make her debut later in "The Naked Time". Barrett, later Roddenberry's wife, also did the voice for the ship's computer. Roddenberry's inclusion of the Asian Sulu and black Uhura, both of them intelligent, well-spoken professionals, was a bold move when most television characters of the time were white and those who weren't were often presented in a highly stereotypical manner. thumb|right|320px|The original starship Enterprise

Roddenberry's production staff included art director Matt Jefferies. Jefferies designed the Enterprise; his contribution was commemorated in the so-called Jefferies tube, which became a standard part of the (fictional) design of Federation starships. Jefferies' starship concepts arrived at a final saucer-and-cylinders design that became a template for all subsequent Federation space vehicles. In addition to working with his brother, John, to create the series' famed phaser weapons, Jefferies also developed the main set for the Enterprise bridge (based on an original design by Pato Guzman) and used his practical experience as a WWII airman and knowledge of aircraft design to come up with a sleek, functional, ergonomic bridge layout. Costume designer William Ware Theiss created the striking look of the Enterprise uniforms and the risqué costumes for female guest stars. Artist and sculptor Wah Chang, who had worked for Walt Disney, was hired to design and manufacture props: he created the flip-open communicator and the portable sensing-recording-computing "tricorder". Later, he would create various memorable aliens, such as the Gorn.

The series introduced television viewers to many ideas which later became common in science fiction films: warp drive, force fields, wireless hand-held communicators and scanners, desktop computer terminals, laser surgery, starship cloaking devices. Although these concepts had numerous antecedents in sci-fi literature and film, they had never before been integrated in one presentation and most of them were certainly new to TV. Even the ship's automatic doors were a novel feature in 1966. In the 2002 book Star Trek: I'm Working On That, William Shatner and co-author Chip Walter explore some of these technologies and how they relate to today's world.

After a few episodes were filmed, but before they had been officially aired, Roddenberry screened one or two of them at Worldcon in Cleveland in August, 1966 and, as he related in a telegram to Desilu production executive Herbert F. Solow, received a standing ovation.

During the show's second season, the threat of cancellation loomed. The show's devoted fanbase conducted an unprecedented letter-writing campaign, petitioning NBC to keep the show on the air. This time the show was saved by an unprecedented write-in mail campaign spearheaded by a collection of science fiction fans of the show, most notably Bjo Trimble, and who succeeded in getting more than one million letters of support written to NBC corporate to save the show. The letters were written in such a way that NBC corporate, not a fan service, had to open and read them all, which severely challenged NBC's mail handling department. One NBC official indicated that one hundred and fifty thousand would have been enough to do the trick. NBC actually came on the air after Star Trek, one episode, and announced that the show had been renewed and to please stop writing to them. This prompted letters of thanks in similar numbers and with similar conditions requiring specific corporate attention.

When the show was renewed, however, it was placed into the Friday Night Death Slot, a time slot undesirable for its audience. Roddenberry attempted to force NBC to give it a better slot, and failed. As a result, Roddenberry chose to withdraw from the stress of daily production, though he remained nominally in charge of the series as executive producer. Roddenberry reduced his direct involvement in Star Trek before the start of the final season to protest the changed timeslot, and was replaced by Fred Freiberger. NBC then substantially reduced Star Trek's budget which brought about a marked decline in the quality of many third season episodes. As Nichelle Nichols writes:

"While NBC paid lip service to expanding Star Trek's audience, it [now] slashed our production budget until it was actually ten percent lower than it had been in our first season....This is why in the third season you saw fewer outdoor location shots, for example. Top writers, top guest stars, top anything you needed was harder to come by. Thus, Star Trek's demise became a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I can assure you, that is exactly as it was meant to be."

The series was canceled in its third season, despite the protests of a renewed letter writing campaign. However, the marketing personnel of the network complained to management that the series' cancellation was premature. It turned out that after using new techniques for profiling demographics of the viewing audience, they found the Star Trek audience was highly desirable for advertisers to the point where they considered the series a highly profitable property. Unfortunately, that revelation came too late to resume production of the series.

Rebirth

The series went into reruns in the fall of 1972, and by the late 1970s had been sold in over 150 domestic and 60 international markets. The show developed a cult following, and rumors of reviving the franchise began.

Ray Bradbury was one of the science-fiction writers who offered a premise for the Star Trek feature film.

Roddenberry had first proposed a Star Trek feature at the 1968 World Science Fiction Convention. The movie was to have been set before the television series, showing how the crew of the Enterprise met. The popularity of the syndicated Star Trek caused Paramount Pictures and Roddenberry to begin developing the film in May 1975. Roddenberry was allocated $3 to $5 million to develop a script. By June 30 he had produced what he considered an acceptable script, but studio executives disagreed. This first draft, The God Thing, featured a grounded Admiral Kirk assembling the old crew on the refitted Enterprise to clash with a godlike entity many miles across, hurtling towards Earth. The object turns out to be a super-advanced computer, the remains of a scheming race who were cast out of their dimension. Kirk wins out, the entity returns to its dimension, and the Enterprise crew resumes their voyages. The basic premise and scenes such as a transporter accident and Spock's Vulcan ritual were discarded, but later returned to the final script. The film was postponed until spring 1975 while Paramount fielded new scripts for Star Trek II (the working title) from acclaimed writers such as Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon and Harlan Ellison. Ellison's story had a snake-like alien race tampering with Earth's history to create a kindred race; Kirk reunites with his old crew, but they are faced with the dilemma of killing off the reptilian race in Earth's prehistory just to maintain humanity's dominance. When Ellison presented his idea, an executive suggested Ellison read Chariots of the Gods? and include the Maya civilization into his story, which enraged the writer because he knew Mayans did not exist at the dawn of time. By October 1975 Robert Silverberg had been signed to work on the screenplay along with a second writer, John D. F. Black, whose treatment featured a black hole that threatened to consume all of existence. Roddenberry teamed up with Jon Povill to write a new story that featured the Enterprise crew setting an altered universe right by time travel; like Black's idea, Paramount did not consider it epic enough.

The original Star Trek cast—who had agreed to appear in the new movie, with contracts as-yet unsigned pending script approval—grew anxious about the constant delays, and pragmatically accepted other acting offers while Roddenberry worked with Paramount. The studio decided to turn the project over to the television division, reasoning that since the roots of the franchise lay in television the writers would be able to develop the right script. A number of screenwriters offered up ideas that were summarily rejected. As Paramount executives' interest in the film began to wane, Roddenberry, backed by fan letters, applied pressure to the studio. In June 1976, Paramount assigned Jerry Isenberg, a young and active producer, to be executive producer of the project, with the budget expanded to $8 million. Povill was tasked with finding more writers to develop a script. His list included Edward Anhalt, James Goldman, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Ernest Lehman, and Robert Bloch. To cap off his list, Povill put as his last recommendation "Jon Povill—almost credit: Star Trek II story (with Gene Roddenberry). Will be a big shot some day. Should be hired now while he is cheap and humble." The end result was a compiled list of 34 names, none of whom were ever chosen to pen the script.

Roddenberry and the Star Trek cast on hand for the space shuttle Enterprise's maiden voyage on September 17, 1976.

In October, British screenwriters Chris Bryant and Allan Scott wrote a 20 page treatment entitled Planet of the Titans, which executives Barry Diller and Michael Eisner liked. Bryant believed he earned the screenwriting assignment because his view of Kirk resembled what Roddenberry modeled him on; "one of Horatio Nelson's captains in the South Pacific, six months away from home and three months away by communication". In the treatment, Kirk and his crew encounter beings they believe to be the mythical Titans and travel back millions of years in time, accidentally teaching early man to make fire. Planet of the Titans also explored the concept of the third eye. Povill wrote up a list of possible directors, including Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Lucas, and Robert Wise, but all were busy at the time (or were not willing to work on the small script money budget.) Philip Kaufman, having impressive science fiction credits, signed on to direct and was given a crash course in the series. Roddenberry screened ten episodes from the original series for Kaufman, including the most representative of the show and those he considered most popular: "The City on the Edge of Forever", "Devil in the Dark", "Amok Time", "Journey to Babel", "Shore Leave", "The Trouble with Tribbles", "The Enemy Within", "The Corbomite Maneuver", "This Side of Paradise", and "A Piece of the Action". Early work was promising and by the fall of 1976 the project was building momentum. Fans organized a mail campaign that flooded the White House with 400,000 letters, influencing Gerald Ford to rechristen the space shuttle Constitution to Enterprise. Bryan and Scott's proposal became the first accepted by the studio in October; Roddenberry immediately stopped work on other projects to refocus on Star Trek, and the screenwriters and Isenberg were swamped with grateful fan mail. The elation was short-lived; the first draft of the completed script was not finished until March 1, 1977, and pressure was mounting for Paramount to either begin production or cut its losses and cancel the project. Isenberg began scouting filming locations and hired designers and illustrators to complement the script. Dissatisfied with having everyone take a turn at rewriting the script, Bryant and Scott quit in April 1977. Kaufman reconceived the story with Spock as the captain of his own ship and featuring Toshirō Mifune as Spock's Klingon nemesis, but Katzenberg informed the director in May that the film was canceled.

Barry Diller planned on anchoring a new Paramount television network with a new Star Trek series.

Barry Diller had grown concerned by the direction Star Trek had taken in Planet of the Titans, and suggested to Roddenberry that it was time to take the franchise back to its roots as a television series. Diller planned on a new Star Trek series forming the cornerstone for a new television network. Though Paramount was loath to abandon its work on the film, Roddenberry wanted to bring as many of the production staff from the original series to work on the new show, titled Star Trek: Phase II.

After a few months of production, the success of Close Encounters of the Third Kind showed Paramount that Star Wars' success in the science fiction genre at the box office could repeat. On November 11, just two and a half weeks before production on Phase II was due to start, the studio announced that the television series had been canceled in favor of a new feature film. Cast and crew who had been hired that Monday were laid off by Friday, and construction came to a halt. Production was moved to April 1978 so that the necessary scripts, sets, and wardrobe could be upgraded.

On March 28, 1978, Paramount assembled the largest press conference held at the studio since Cecil B. DeMille announced he was making The Ten Commandments. Eisner announced that Academy-Award winning director Robert Wise would direct a film adaptation of the television series, titled Star Trek—The Motion Picture. The budget was projected at $15 million. Dennis Clark (Comes a Horseman) was invited to rewrite the script and to include Spock, but he disliked Roddenberry who demanded sole credit. Livingston returned as writer, and although he also found Roddenberry unreasonable, Wise and Katzenberg convinced him to continue rewriting the script throughout production.

The writers began to adapt "In Thy Image", the Phase II pilot, into a film script, but the script was not completed until four months after production commenced. Wise felt that the story seemed right, but the dramatic action and visuals could be upgraded and made more exciting. As the intended start of filming in late spring 1978 approached, it was clear a new start date was needed. Time was of the essence; Paramount was worried that their science fiction film would appear at the tail end of a cycle, now that every major studio had such a film in the works. Livingston described the writers' issue with the story, calling it "unworkable":

The script received constant input from the producers and from Shatner and Nimoy. The discussions led to incessant rewrites, right up to the day the pages were to be shot. At one point, scenes were rewritten so often on the same day so that it became necessary to note on script pages the hour of the revision. Though revisions were constant, the biggest push for change revolved around the ending. Much of the rewriting had to do with the relationships of Kirk and Spock, Decker and Ilia, and the Enterprise and V'ger. A final draft of the third act was approved in late September 1978, but if it had not been for a Penthouse interview where NASA director Robert Jastrow said that mechanical forms of life were likely, the ending may not have been approved at all.

Owing to the rush to complete the film, The Motion Picture was never screened before test audiences, something Wise later regretted. The director carried the fresh print of the film to the world premiere, held at the K-B Mac Arthur Theater in Washington, D.C. Roddenberry, Wise, and the principal cast attended the function, which also served as an invitational benefit for the scholarship and youth education fund of the National Space Club. While thousands of fans were expected to attend, rain reduced fan turnout to around 300. The premiere was followed by a black-tie reception at the National Air and Space Museum. More than 500 people—consisting of the cast and crew, working members of the space community, and the few "hardcore Trekkies" who could afford the $100 admission price—filled the museum. The film was the first major Hollywood adaptation of a television series that had been off the air for nearly a decade to retain its original principal cast.

The Motion Picture opened in North America on December 7, 1979, in 859 theaters and set a box office record for highest weekend gross, making $11,815,203 in its first weekend (generally considered to be a slow time for the movie business). The film beat the record set by Superman (1978), which had opened in a similar number of theaters but had been released in late December—a busier time. The Motion Picture earned $17 million within a week. At its widest domestic distribution, the film was shown in 1,002 theaters; it grossed $82,258,456 in the United States. Overall, the film grossed $139 million worldwide. The Motion Picture was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Art Direction (Harold Michelson, Joseph R. Jennings, Leon Harris, John Vallone and Linda DeScenna), Best Visual Effects, and Best Original Score.

Wrath of Khan

Gene Roddenberry was removed from a direct role in the development of The Wrath of Khan due to concerns that he was the main reason behind The Motion Picture's lukewarm reception.

After the release of The Motion Picture, executive producer Gene Roddenberry wrote his own sequel. In his plot, the crew of the Enterprise travel back in time to set right a corrupted time line after Klingons use the Guardian of Forever to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This was rejected by Paramount executives, who blamed the poor performance and inflated budget ($46 million) of the first movie on its plodding pace and the constant rewrites Roddenberry demanded. As a consequence, Roddenberry was removed from the production and, according to Shatner, "kicked upstairs" to the ceremonial position of executive consultant. Harve Bennett, a new Paramount television producer, was made producer for the next Star Trek film. According to Bennett, he was called in front of a group including Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner and asked if he thought he could make a better movie than The Motion Picture, which Bennett confessed he found "really boring". When Bennett replied in the affirmative, Charles Bluhdorn asked, "Can you make it for less than forty-five-fucking-million-dollars?" Bennett replied that "Where I come from, I can make five movies for that."

Principal photography began on November 9, 1981, and ended on January 29, 1982. The Wrath of Khan was more action-oriented than its predecessor, but less costly to make. The project was supervised by Paramount's television unit rather than its theatrical division. Bennett, a respected television veteran, made The Wrath of Khan on a budget of $11 million—far less than The Motion Picture's $46 million.

The Wrath of Khan opened on June 4, 1982 in 1,621 theaters in the United States. It made $14,347,221 in its opening weekend, at the time the largest opening weekend gross in history. Critical response to The Wrath of Khan was positive. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 92% of selected critics have given the film a positive review based on a sample of 38.

Paramount was excited and quickly prepared for another Star Trek film. The Wrath of Khan's director, Nicholas Meyer, would not return for the third entry; he had disagreed with changes made to The Wrath of Khan's ending without him. Upon seeing The Wrath of Khan, Leonard Nimoy (who had previously not planned on reprising the role) became "excited" about playing Spock again. When asked by Paramount Pictures if he wanted to reprise the role for the third feature, Nimoy agreed and told them "You're damned right, I want to direct that picture!" Studio chief Michael Eisner was initially reluctant to hire Nimoy because he mistakenly believed that he hated Star Trek and had demanded Spock be killed off in his contract. After persuading him otherwise, Nimoy was given the job. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's first reaction to the news of Nimoy as director was that Bennett had "hired a director you can't fire".

The Search for Spock

The Search for Spock opened June 1 in a record-breaking 1,996 theaters nationwide. The film broke the opening weekend gross that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom set just a week before, making $16 million. In its second weekend the film's gross dropped declined 42 percent. The film made $76,471,046 in the domestic box office. The film received mostly positive reviews from critics.

The Voyage Home

Following the success of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, director Leonard Nimoy and producer Harve Bennett signed on to return. As William Shatner was unwilling to return, Nimoy and Bennett spent eight months considering a prequel concept by Ralph Winter about the characters at Starfleet Academy, before Shatner received a pay increase and signed on to star. Nimoy and Bennett then selected a time travel story where the Enterprise encounter a problem which could only be fixed by something only available in the present day (the Star Trek characters' past). They considered numerous ideas including violin makers and oil drillers, as well as a disease which had its cure destroyed with the rainforests. "But the depiction of thousands of sick and dying people seemed rather gruesome for our light-hearted film, and the thought of our crew taking a 600 year round trip just to bring back a snail darter wasn't all that thrilling!", explained Nimoy. The director then read a book on extinct animals and conceived the used storyline.

The film was a critical and commercial success. It grossed $109,713,132 in the U.S. and $133,000,000 worldwide, against a $27,000,000 budget. Of the first ten films, it sold the second-most tickets and was the second most profitable movie in the series adjusted for 2007 inflation (behind The Motion Picture though both are now surpassed by the eleventh film). On the Special Edition DVD of the film, Leonard Nimoy says that this was the most well-received of all the Star Trek films made to that point. Producer Ralph Winter also added that this film did very well as it was liked by both fans and non-fans of the Star Trek phenomenon. Due to the success of this film, Paramount greenlit a new Star Trek television series (after failing to get one off the ground in 1977). The series ultimately became Star Trek: The Next Generation, which premiered in major markets on September 28, 1987.

• • • • • Old stuff *****

=Old rebirth section

When the show was cancelled, owner Paramount Studios hoped to recoup its production losses by selling the syndication rights to the show. The series went into reruns in the fall of 1972, and by the late 1970s had been sold in over 150 domestic and 60 international markets. The show developed a cult following, and rumors of reviving the franchise began.

The first new Star Trek was Star Trek: The Animated Series. The series was produced by Filmation in association with Paramount Television and ran for two seasons from 1973 to 1974 on NBC, airing a total of twenty-two half-hour episodes.

The popularity of the syndicated Star Trek led Paramount Pictures and Roddenberry to begin developing a new "Star Trek Phase 2" series in May 1975. Work on the series came to an end when the proposed Paramount Television Service folded.

Following the success of the science fiction movies Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the planned pilot episode of Phase II was adapted into the feature film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The film was released in North America on December 7, 1979, with mixed reviews from critics. The film earned $139 million worldwide, which fell short of studio expectations but was enough for Paramount to propose a sequel. The studio forced Roddenberry to relinquish creative control of future sequels. In total, six star Trek feature films were produced between 1979 and 1991.

In response to Star Trek's popularity in the movie theater, the series returned to the television in the critically acclaimed series Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) in 1987. The show was unusual in that it was broadcast as first-run syndication rather than on a major network. Paramount and the local stations split the advertising time.

After Roddenberry

Star Trek's creator, Roddenberry, died on October 24, 1991, of heart failure at the age of 70. Roddenberry granted Rick Berman, the executive producer of TNG, control of the franchise. TNG had the highest ratings of any of the Star Trek series and was the #1 syndicated show during the last few years of its original seven-season run.

In response to TNG's success, Paramount began production of a spin-off Star Trek series Deep Space Nine, which was released in 1993. While never as popular as TNG, DS9 had solid ratings, and it also lasted seven seasons. In January 1995, a few months after TNG ended, a fourth TV series, Voyager was released. As such, Star Trek saturation hit a peak between 1994 and 2000 with DS9 and Voyager airing concurrently and three of the four TNG-based feature films being released during this time period.

Voyager was the flagship show of the new United Paramount Network (UPN) and thus, the first Star Trek series since the original that was shown on a major network. The show would last seven seasons, ending in 2001, making it the longest running show in UPN's short history. A new Star Trek prequel TV series Enterprise was produced after Voyager's end, in 2001.

Enterprise did not enjoy the high ratings of its predecessors. By the series' third season, UPN threatened to cancel Enterprise. Fans launched a campaign reminiscent of the one that saved the third season of the Original Series. Paramount reacted to the fan requests the same way it did for TOS by renewing Enterprise for a fourth season, but moving it to the "Friday night death slot". Like the Original Series, Enterprise did not fare well during this time slot. UPN announced the cancellation of Enterprise at the end of its fourth season, and its final episode aired on May 13, 2005. Fan groups, such as "Save Enterprise", again attempted to save the series and even announced a drive to raise $30 million to privately finance a fifth season of Enterprise. Though the effort garnered considerable press, the fan drive was unsuccessful in saving the series. Cancellation of Enterprise ended an eighteen-year production run of Star Trek programming on television. This, along with the poor box office performance in 2002 of the film Nemesis, cast an uncertain light upon the future of the Star Trek franchise in general.

Berman, who had been responsible for many of the franchise's commercial successes, was relieved of control of the Star Trek franchise upon the box office failure of Nemesis.

Reboot

In 2007, Paramount hired a new creative team to reboot the franchise. Writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, and Lost producer, J. J. Abrams, were given the freedom to reinvent the feel of Trek and alter the canonical timeline.

An eleventh film, titled Star Trek, was released in May 2009. The eleventh Star Trek film's marketing campaign targeted non-fans, even using the phrase "this is not your father's Star Trek" in the film's advertisements.

The film has earned considerable critical and financial success, grossing the most of any Star Trek film, even in inflation-adjusted dollars. The film's major cast members have signed on for two sequels. The script for the twelfth film is projected for completion around December 2009, with the film's release scheduled for mid-2011 coinciding with the 45th anniversary of Star Trek.

Abrams was not the first team to propose a reboot. An attempt was also made by J. Michael Straczynski and Bryce Zabel to reboot the franchise with the crew of the original series, but Paramount ignored the proposal as they were not "even willing to talk about Star Trek".

Franchise ownership

The original series began production under Desilu Productions. With the merger of Desilu into Paramount Pictures, that studio assumed outright ownership of the Star Trek franchise until 2006, when CBS took over ownership of the franchise. Certain aspects (feature film and DVD distribution rights) are still owned by Paramount.