The Kickstarter for The Battle for Axanar closes today. The feature-length documentary covers the most litigated fan film in Star Trek history, and it needs backers to finish.
Shark Week executive producer Seth Sherman made the film through Warp 9 Productions, LLC. It follows Star Trek: Axanar, the fan production that Paramount and CBS took to court in 2015.
Alec Peters started Axanar in 2013. He wanted to put the Battle of Axanar on screen, the Four Years War clash that the original series mentioned in “Whom Gods Destroy” but never showed. His first step was Prelude to Axanar, a 20-minute in-universe documentary funded by a $101,000 Kickstarter in 2014. The cast included Richard Hatch of Battlestar Galactica, Gary Graham of Star Trek: Enterprise, Kate Vernon, and Tony Todd. The feature campaign that followed passed $400,000, a record for independent Trek crowdfunding at the time.
Then the studios sued. The case settled in 2017. Paramount and CBS had already published fan film guidelines that capped productions at 15 minutes. Feature-length fan films with professional casts and six-figure crowdfunding ended there, and the fan film scene has not looked the same since.
The Battle for Axanar tells that history with a television documentarian behind the camera. For anyone who wants independent creators to have room to work in the franchises they love, it is the only project covering this story.
Fandom Pulse backs independent creators and crowdfunded projects. If you want this film finished, the campaign page is here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/axanardoc/the-battle-for-axanar
If a studio can sue the most ambitious fan film of its era out of existence, who decides whether fans get to tell stories in a franchise at all?