CBS and Paramount Pictures have released their promised guidelines for fan films. In the wake of the contentious Axanar lawsuit Star Trek Beyond director Justin Lin pressured the two studios in control of Star Trek to both drop their lawsuit against the big-budget fan film production (it’s currently still ongoing) and lay out rules for Star Trek fan films to avoid potential lawsuits in the future.
Now the “Guidelines for Avoiding Objections” have arrived, though they’ve already met with widespread objections from fans, including the director of Axanar, Robert Meyer Burnett, who described the new guidelines as “draconian” on Twitter:
CBS announced just announced STAR TREK fan film guidelines so draconian I can no longer work on my own film. https://t.co/bIg40Y2GjO
— Robert Meyer Burnett Viceroy of Verisimilitude (@BurnettRM) June 23, 2016
The full guidelines are posted on the official Star Trek website, but here are a few that, if followed, would drastically shrink the current Trek fan film ecosystem.
“The fan production must be less than 15 minutes for a single self-contained story, or no more than 2 segments, episodes or parts, not to exceed 30 minutes total, with no additional seasons, episodes, parts, sequels or remakes.”
This would effectively ban Star Trek webseries like Star Trek: New Voyages and Star Trek Continues.
“The fan production must be family friendly and suitable for public presentation. Videos must not include profanity, nudity, obscenity, pornography, depictions of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, or any harmful or illegal activity, or any material that is offensive, fraudulent, defamatory, libelous, disparaging, sexually explicit, threatening, hateful, or any other inappropriate content. The content of the fan production cannot violate any individual’s right of privacy.”
This particular stipulation is vague enough to serve as a near catch-all, allowing for continued selective IP enforcement by CBS or Paramount. Banning “disparaging,” “hateful,” “offensive,” and “any other inappropriate content” would seem to eliminate a broad swath of potentially fruitful creative avenues.
The guidelines also ban using Star Trek talent, past or present, eliminating the cameos frequently used to draw attention to new fan film projects. Other official guidelines include disclaimers, titling rules (no mention of Star Trek except mandated “A STAR TREK FAN PRODUCTION” subtitle), fundraising, costuming and distribution guidelines.
John Van Citters, vice president of product development for CBS, will further flesh out CBS’ official fan film position moving forward in a StarTrek.com podcast to be released Wednesday.
The new guidelines have already been widely picked apart and mocked by Star Trek fans who see them as prohibitively restrictive.
Axanar’s executive producer Alec Peters responded to the new guidelines with the following statement:
“After a review of CBS and Paramount's announcement of their guidelines for Star Trek fan films, I'm really disappointed that this set of guidelines represents the studios' best efforts on behalf of fans. These guidelines appear to have been tailor-made to shut down all of the major fan productions and stifle fandom. In no way can that be seen as supportive or encouraging, which is very disheartening.
While CBS and Paramount claim to want to encourage the passion of fans to produce ‘reasonable fan fiction’, the restrictions presented do just the opposite, willfully ignoring over forty years of fan works that helped buoy the Star Trek franchise through some very lean years and enthusiastically spread the magic of the franchise in more plentiful times.
Around the franchise's 50th anniversary, we would have hoped CBS and Paramount would have taken this opportunity to unite with Star Trek fans in celebration of their creativity, not seek to crush it.”
While it’s early to know exactly how the fan film community will respond, initial reactions are not positive. Now the question is whether fan films will largely fall in line or continue risking lawsuits from CBS and Paramount Studios.
