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Brent Spiner, best known for playing the “Star Trek” android Data, once wanted to make a movie he called “Star Trek’s” Justice League. This will probably sound very appealing to long-time fans of the franchise. So why on earth didn’t that happen?
Although Spiner continually considered quitting “Star Trek” early in the franchise’s early years, the “Next Generation” star has been a staple of the series for decades now. According to a recent interview with TrekMovie.com, in the early 2000s, especially after the release of “Star Trek: Nemesis,” he worked with screenwriter John Logan on a big crossover movie that would feature “Everybody.” “The only thing I could say was that it was going to be absolutely fantastic.” Spinder said.
The promised film would include characters from “every Trek that existed at the time,” he added. Spiner added that realistically the movie would never happen.
“It was a pipe dream for us because no one could afford to do that, especially after my salary. We had an original script that we wrote, but it was rejected. It wasn’t a script. We had a story idea where everyone had two roles, but alas, that wasn’t the case.”
It certainly doesn’t help that “Nemesis” is generally considered one of the worst “Star Trek” movies. It also remains the worst-performing ‘Star Trek’ film at the box office. From a business perspective, this made Spiner and Logan’s pitch an uphill battle. An expensive, ambitious film that follows in the footsteps of catastrophic financial failure is never an easy sell.
Paramount didn’t want to make a big Star Trek crossover movie with Brent Spiner.
John Rogen was a popular screenwriter at the time, and although “Nemesis” wasn’t his best work, he also wrote Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator,” which won the Best Picture Oscar. Logan later went on to do numerous works in the James Bond franchise, including writing the biggest Bond film of all time at the box office with “Skyfall.”
Even with a big screenwriter on board and ambitious plans to draw characters from every corner of the “Trek” universe, it was a non-starter for Paramount brass. “We had a meeting and they said, ‘No, we don’t want to do that.’ So that’s the way it goes,” said Brent Spiner.
Talking a little further, Spiner praised Logan’s abilities as a writer.
“We were very lucky, I know. [Nemesis] It wasn’t a fan favorite, but we were very lucky to have John Logan write it. Because I think John is the best screenwriter in Hollywood. I thought he actually did a great job.”
Paramount later decided to reboot the franchise with director JJ Abrams, resulting in 2009’s “Star Trek” and a series of sequels. Spiner vowed to play Data again, but “Star Trek: Picard” changed his mind as season 3 of the show served as a major “Next Generation” reunion.
You can purchase “Star Trek: The Original Motion Picture Collection” on 4K, Blu-ray, or DVD from Amazon.