We have all heard that J.J. Abrams could not pass up the opportunity to direct STAR WARS: EPISODE VII despite originally declining the offer due to his commitment to STAR TREK. With STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS now hitting theaters and the possibility of Abrams directing the sequel to STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS in doubt, we may now be getting the real reason why things have ended up the way they have.
According to The Wrap, Abrams became frustrated at not being able to develop STAR TREK television series to further the plots and characters that just didn’t fit into the feature films, something that Disney and Lucasfilm are planning for STAR WARS.
CBS and Paramount were both owned by Viacom until 2006 when CBS left the parent company. Paramount retained rights to features while CBS kept the rights to television series. CBS has continued to market Original Series memorabilia which has caused major issues between CBS, Paramount, and Bad Robot. A source told The Wrap this:
“J.J. just threw up his hands. The message was, ‘Why set up all this when we’ll just be competing against ourselves?’ The studio wanted to please Bad Robot, but it was allowing CBS to say yay or nay when it came to what was happening with the ‘Star Trek’ products.”
STAR TREK has always been a niche franchise that finally opened up to a larger fanbase with Abrams reboot in 2009. Since then, Bad Robot has built up major buzz for STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS, but we have not seen a television series since the cancellation of STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE. Bryan Singer and Brian Fuller both had ideas for very unique series that never came to fruition, but you can imagine what J.J. Abrams has been pondering all these years since reinventing the story of Kirk and crew.
While we may never hear this as the official reason why J.J. went from TREK to WARS, it does seem to make sense. As a fan of both series, this makes me both happy and sad. Either way, we are getting more from both series and that is a good thing.