Paramount Pictures/History with Star Trek/Alternate universe

While the last three live-action Star Trek productions had tanked, the same era also witnessed a remarkable upswing in other science fiction productions; television had Ronald D. Moore's critically acclaimed revamped Battlestar Galactica series, whose first regular season started its run, while Enterprises last was being aired, but it was especially the big screen that saw a proliferation of genre feature productions, quite a few of them becoming box-office smashes, those stemming from the Marvel Comics universe in particular. It was after Paramount itself had a hand in four of them, War of the Worlds (2005 as distributor), Transformers (2007 as co-producer), Iron Man (2008 as distributor), and Cloverfield (2008 as co-producer), that the studio decided, even though it no longer owned the franchise, to give Star Trek another go and activate the license they held from CBS. In this it was very reminiscent of their decision to do The Motion Picture back in 1977 in response to Star Wars. In order to maximize the chances for commercial success they contracted Transformer scribes Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci for the same chore, as well as the highly successful Cloverfield producer J.J. Abrams for that, as well as the directorial chores. In effect, it had been Abrams himself, after he had been signed by Paramount for a five-movie deal in 2006 – Cloverfield becoming his first one for Paramount – who presented the idea of revisiting Star Trek to the studio. () These men set to work to reinvent Star Trek, essentially recreating Star Trek from scratch with little of the philosophies behind the Star Trek universe as postulated by creator Roddenberry left intact – if any at all, exactly as predicted by Robert Justman back in 1994, but fifteen years earlier than even he could have foreseen.
It worked, the alternate universe feature film became a box office success, easily surpassing any of its predecessors by far. The 2009 film itself became surpassed by its successor, the sequel , also directed and produced by Abrams. Its sequel became the film , which was however, rather unexpectedly, considerably less successful. (see: Star Trek films: Performance summary)
Yet, while hugely successful at the box offices, long standing Star Trek production veteran Doug Drexler spoke for many prime universe Star Trek fans, skeptical of the reinvented version, when he stated, "Technically they are beautiful… the work is stunning… however… and I hope no one will hold this against me… I did not enjoy the last two films, and honest… I really wanted to… but for me, Star Trek has to have a philosophical, humanist bend to it… always making a point, or asking a question. It should be introspective, and self examining. That's the Roddenberry factor. The new films are devoid of Gene Roddenberry, and at the end of the day, I'm not ok with that." Drexler's observation was more than validated when Paramount Motion Pictures Group President Marc Evans made the following comment in 2015, "I often think about the areas of the Star Trek universe that haven’t been taken advantage of. Like, I'll be ridiculous with you, but what would look like? Where is the of the Star Trek universe? That fascinates me," a statement that flew straight in the face of Roddenberry's non-militaristic vision for his Star Trek universe – and which had actually already spawned some fan criticism when the MACOs were introduced in Enterprise. Drexler is not the only prime universe production staffer skeptical of alternate universe Star Trek, as Producer Robert Meyer Burnett has voiced similar concerns in public. 
Still, the box office aggregates of nearly US$1.2 billion for the first three films alone (surpassing the amount all ten previous Star Trek movies had made), as well as the partial resurgence of the overall franchise, indicated that revitalized Star Trek had attracted a new viewership that went well above and beyond traditional Trekdom.