STAR TREK Fan Film Lawsuit Moving Forward Despite J.J. Abrams Saying It Wouldn't
Paramount is continuing their war on Star Trek fan-film Axanar, despite indications from J.J. Abrams that it would soon go away. Slashfilm reports the director made the following statement after reports surfaced that director Justin Lin had convinced Paramount to dismiss the claim...
A few months back there was a fan movie and this lawsuit that happened between the studio and these fans, and Justin was sort of outraged by this as a longtime fan. We started talking about it and realized this wasn’t an appropriate way to deal with the fans. The fans of Star Trek are part of this world. We went to the studio and pushed them to stop this lawsuit. Within a few weeks, it’ll be announced that this lawsuit is going away.
Now, Paramount has filed a motion to dismiss both directors' claims as irrelevant in court. Specifically, the film studio released the following statement...
“J.J. Abrams is a producer/director of certain Star Trek Copyrighted Works and Justin Lin was the director of Star Trek Beyond. Neither Mr. Abrams nor Mr. Lin is an authorized representative of either of the Plaintiffs.” … “A third party’s statement about the merits of this lawsuit has absolutely no bearing on the amount of money Defendants’ obtained by their infringing conduct, nor does it bear on any other aspect of damages.”
While that sounds like a rough thing to say, it is technically true. It's not like either man has a claim to the rights of the franchise, but it's also s***** to blast two guys working for you for speaking out of turn, however, misguided it may have been. I don't believe Abrams and Lin's comments would've held up in court, but then again, I'm not a lawyer.
In either case, the ridiculous money-grubbing saga of Paramount continues.