Paramount Pictures/History with Star Trek/Launching the Star Trek movie franchise

As if to underscore Roddenberry's suspicions, former Original Series writer D.C. Fontana was already able to report in the fanzine Star-Borne of that, "Paramount… [is] enormously impressed by the quantity (and quality) of fan mail they continue to receive. The possibility seems to be slowly developing of a Star Trek feature movie for theatrical release, aimed at becoming the new Star Trek television pilot… on the network front, NBC still expresses great interest in doing Star Trek in some form. Both NBC and Paramount continue to receive a great deal of mail and have had to assign secretaries for the sole job of answering it." NBC's complete turnaround not only stemmed from the spectacular resurgence of the Original Series in syndication, but also from its own accounting department. Shortly before Fontana's report, NBC had replaced its old Nielsen rating system, purportedly the results from which having been the primary reason for the cancellation of the series, with a new and updated one. When they ran the original Original Series figures through their new system they found out much to their surprise that it had not only reached full penetration into their most coveted target audience, the male population between 18 and 45, but also that the series had been one of the most successful series the network had ever aired. The sickening realization hit upon the dismayed network executives that they had slaughtered the goose that laid the golden eggs, something that every Star Trek fan at the time could have told them. Hurriedly approaching Roddenberry to see if the series could be revitalized, it turned out to be unfeasible, as Paramount had only a few months earlier cleared out their warehouses from the vast majority of the remaining Star Trek production assets, those either having been scrapped, given away, or simply stolen. Recreating them, calculated at US$750,000, was deemed far too cost prohibitive. It did however, lead to NBC ordering the creation of Star Trek: The Animated Series. (Star Trek - Where No One Has Gone Before, pp. 51-52)
And indeed, the phenomenon was not lost on Bluhdorn himself, as he had by 1974 completely reversed his stance from the one he had back in 1967, and had by now become enamored with Star Trek due to its huge and unexpected success in syndication – and the recent addition of the Animated Series, which, while not produced by the studio, was legally Paramount property nevertheless, adding an additional Star Trek revenue stream – embracing the property as something of a pet project. It was therefore, after he had been presented by a subordinate, Paramount's then chief financial officer Arthur Barron, with the idea of turning Star Trek into a movie, that he gave Barry Diller, freshly appointed in October 1974 as the new studio head, as one of his consignments, to turn the idea into a project. Not particularly interested in doing Star Trek in any format whatsoever, but, by any standard, a formidable executive himself, Diller nevertheless did not want to repeat the mistake his immediate predecessor Frank Yablans made by antagonizing his new boss and his newfound infatuation with Star Trek and set to work. (The Keys to the Kingdom, Chapter 5)
As it turned out, Roddenberry had already approached the studio with a pitch for a Star Trek movie one year previously. Then Paramount President, Frank Yablans, was very interested, but due to Roddenberry's obtuseness at the negotiation table, the proposition fell through. (Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, 1997, pp 420-421) Despite the failure of the negotiations, Yablans' interest in producing high-tech science fiction was piqued nevertheless and to this end he facilitated and arranged the funding for the establishment of two Paramount visual effects subsidiaries, Douglas Trumbull's Future General Corporation (FGC) and Carey Melcher's Magicam, Inc, a very short time thereafter. Unfortunately, his immediate successors, Barry Diller and Michael Eisner, had zero affinity with science fiction and none whatsoever with visual effects in particular, and tried to shut down FGC immediately upon their ascent, which came back to haunt the production later on. Yablans however, had failed to inform his boss of Roddenberry's prior overtures, and Bluhdorn perceived this as part of Yablans' overall lack of respect for him, which shortly thereafter led to his downfall. Barron, incidentally, had approached Bluhdorn on his own accord. (The Keys to the Kingdom, Chapter 5)
Still, getting Star Trek off the ground again as a new live action production turned out to be not as straightforward as it originally sounded, and for three years the project stubbornly refused to come into fruition. However, when Diller thought up a fourth television network for the company, Paramount Television Services, officially announced on , he intended Star Trek to serve as its flagship as a new television series, Star Trek: Phase II (or Star Trek II as its official title was to be). Fully endorsed by Bluhdorn, who sensed an even more profitable repeat performance of the property, Operating a fully owned national television network had not been a deep and long-held desire by Paramount alone, but by the other major Hollywood studios as well. The primary reason for this was a purely economical one; it was a means to exercise total control over the substantial and highly profitable market for time slots of advertisements and commercials in their own productions, the revenues of which then accruing directly into the studio coffers in full, instead of those of the established three national networks ABC, CBS, and NBC. While Diller failed to establish a fourth national television network for Paramount in 1977, he did so for his subsequent employer, 20th Century Fox, in 1986, whereas Lucie Salhany succeeded for Paramount where Diller had failed, by establishing a fifth national television network, UPN, in 1994. actual production of a new live-action production was finally started the same month. His initial enthusiasm notwithstanding, Bluhdorn soon found out that America was not yet ready for a fourth television network, informed as such by then Vice President of Research Mel Harris, as advertiser's interest did not materialize and he already pulled the plug on the network project near the end of July. Still, he allowed the production of Star Trek to continue, which was, aside from his own personal interest, in no small part due to the desire not to lose development costs already sunk in all previous revitalization attempts. Star Trek: Phase II eventually morphed into , which was officially announced by the studio on to the public at Paramount Pictures in the largest press conference held since 's announcement of his 1923 silent movie, . (The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, pp. 50-51).
Even set initially at an (in hindsight) unrealistic original budget of US$15 million dollar, Paramount took a huge gamble with The Motion Picture as it was the most complex, ambitious, and expensive movie project the studio had ever embarked upon in its history, Cecil B. DeMille's (inflation adjusted) 1956 remake of his own 1923 silent movie classic The Ten Commandments being the sole exception. Having only just recently reversed the fortunes of the studio, after nearly a two decades long slump, all the studio's biggest box office successes of the mid-1970s, John Travolta's Saturday Night Fever and Grease and Mario Puzo's The Godfather, were in comparison "low-budget" productions, none of them exceeding a production budget of US$6 million dollar (the substantial profits made from these were mainly used as debt relief and repairing the financial position of the studio). Only in the mid-to-late 1980s did production budgets start to habitually balloon exponentially, first in double digits, and subsequently into the triple digits.
Partly due to the studio's hitherto utter lack of experience with a technically complex and visual effects heavy productions of this magnitude, the production of The Motion Picture proved to be exceptionally difficult, troublesome, frustrating, and, for those times, extremely costly, the latter in no small part due to the studio's own mismanagement of the visual effects production. "We didn't know what these things were, Bob Wise [remark: the movie's director] was a lovely man, but he didn't know, either," Diller conceded, though only much later. (The Keys to the Kingdom, 2000, Chapter 6) Running massively over budget as a result, Diller and his executive subordinates (close to nervous exhaustion) were bracing themselves for a financial disaster, which fortunately for them did not materialize. Immensely relieved of having dodged the financial bullet, Diller and his colleagues counted their blessings and were fully prepared to move on, entirely willing to leave Star Trek behind them. Yet, Bluhdorn was of different mind and ordered the development of sequels shortly after the premiere of The Motion Picture in early 1980. Bluhdorn personally selected Harve Bennett who would head, as executive producer, the production of the subsequent four Star Trek films, of which two, and , became particularly successful.
For all intents and purposes, it was therefore Bluhdorn, who was responsible for the creation of the Star Trek movie franchise. (The Keys to the Kingdom, Chapters 5-7) For a more detailed treatise on the difficult birth of the movie franchise, please see Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Production.
Gene Roddenberry, however, indeed responsible for some (but not all) production troubles, was increasingly perceived by the studio as very difficult to work with and was essentially removed by them from creative control over the movie halfway through the production. Actually, Diller had already removed him once entirely from one of the previous revitalization attempts, Star Trek: Planet of the Titans. While the studio, as far as they were concerned, had seen the very last of Roddenberry, the realization also sank in that by now, no Star Trek incarnation could ever be produced without the Roddenberry name attached to it while he was still alive due to his by now firmly established stature in the general populace's awareness as the creator of Star Trek, strongly backed up by a small, but highly vocal hardcore of the more puritanical Trekkies. Adhering to the old adagio "keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer", the studio came up with a crafty solution to the conundrum; Roddenberry was "bumped upstairs", given his own office at the studio with a handsome remuneration, and given the formal title of "Executive Consultant", which meant that directors and creative staff could ask for his opinion on the project, though with the proviso that his advice was not needed to be taken. Required by the agreement to be kept in the loop, but lost in the studio's equivalent of the "Bermuda Triangle", no one ever thereafter heeded Roddenberry's copious, but unsolicited, advice for the subsequent five movies, nor did anyone even bother to consult with him. Though for the studio perhaps a costly solution, it was far cheaper than to be bogged down by incessant lawsuits, which were sure to follow given Roddenberry's character, and dealing with the fallout from the Star Trek fan base, which was equally sure to follow, and the resulting negative publicity. Still, this did not prevent Roddenberry in the slightest from relentlessly harassing studio and production staff alike, on occasion even going as far as threatening with legal actions as Actor/Director William Shatner and Director Nicholas Meyer could attest to. The latter was bluff however, as the stipulations of his studio contract simply did not allow for them, and no legal proceedings ever materialized during this period in time. (William Shatner Presents: Chaos on the Bridge; From Sawdust to Stardust, pp. 240-241; Star Trek Movie Memories, pp. 99, et al.)
While acknowledging this state of affairs as "speculation", an opposing view was proffered by authors Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, who have claimed in their reference book Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Continuing Mission (p. 3) that, "(t)he real reason for Paramount's concern about keeping Roddenberry tied to each Star Trek film was that every executive involved with the productions shared the maddening knowledge that no one had the slightest idea why Star Trek was a success… except Gene Roddenberry. Without his input, there was always the chance that the next movie wouldn't capture whatever it was that made Star Trek so enticing." While staunch Roddenberry supporters Reeves-Stevens' did have a point where the studio executives themselves were concerned, their assertion was certainly contradicted by the directors, producers and screenwriters (most notably Spock Performer/Writer/Director Leonard Nimoy, who most definitely had a thorough understanding of what made Star Trek "tick", arguably even more so than Roddenberry himself did) of the subsequent five movies, all of them, save Shatner's , highly successful and produced without any creative input from Roddenberry whatsoever, and each of them actually opposed by him in varying degrees of vehemence. Roddenberry being put out to pasture, it effectively was the Nimoy-Bennett-Meyer triumvirate that became the keeper of the Star Trek films flame in the decade following The Motion Picture. (Cinefantastique, Vol 22 #5, pp. 39-42)