During an interview at a fan event for the upcoming film “Star Trek: Beyond,” J.J. Abrams revealed that Paramount will be dropping a lawsuit against a Kickstarter-funded fan film at the behest of both him and “Star Trek: Beyond” director Justin Lin.
The film, called “Prelude To Anaxar,” is a 20-minute docudrama that follows the Battle of Anaxar, a major conflict between the Federation and the Klingons. Made in 2014 by Alec Peters, the film received over $100,000 in Kickstarter funding and has received over 2 million views on YouTube. Recently, Paramount and CBS filed a copyright infringement lawsuit seeking $150,000 in damages against Peters.
On May 9, Peters’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit was denied. Peters had planned for “Prelude To Anaxar” to be the precursor to a feature-length film and had raised over $600,000 on Kickstarter for the follow-up project before the lawsuit was filed. Now Abrams says that Peters will be able to move forward freely with the project.
“We talked about this and we realized this is not the appropriate way to deal with the fans,” Abrams said. “We should be celebrating this thing. We, the fans of ‘Star Trek,’ are all a part of this world. We went to the studio and pushed them to stop this lawsuit and now, within the next few weeks, it will be announced that this thing is going away and the fan will be able to work on the project.”
More to come…