Set phasers to “biopic” because Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry is getting one
Emmy-winner Adam Mazer is writing a script for the Roddenberry biopic
Film News Gene Roddenberry
Today is Star Trek-creator Gene Roddenberry’s birthday, and what better way to honor one of the most beloved writers of the last century with a movie about him. Announced today on Deadline, a biopic about the late creator is currently in the early stages. While details are sparse, Roddenbury Entertainment did share the news that Emmy-winner Adam Mazer wrote the already-completed script. Mazer previously wrote the screenplay for the HBO Dr. Kevorkian movie You Don’t Know Jack, which starred Al Pacino.
Roddenberry’s life was undoubtedly eventful enough to warrant a movie. In addition to creating one of the most successful and long-running franchises in television and movie history, he also survived two plane crashes, was an LAPD police officer, a firefighter, and a pilot, who flew 88 missions in World War II. Also, did we mention he created Star Trek?
“Gene led a remarkable life,” his son Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth, who executive produce all the current Star Trek shows, told Deadline. “He was an incredibly complex, compelling man, whose work changed the face of television, and whose ideas changed the world. It’s time to share Gene’s story with audiences everywhere.”
Roddenberry died in 1991 and subsequently had his ashes flown in space, proving that his life will be more interesting than ours even in death. The world of Trek hasn’t slowed since his passing—if anything, it’s gone into warp speed. More than 10 Star Trek movies and shows have premiered since his death. The latest, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Discovery, and Star Trek: Lower Decks, are currently airing on Paramount+. As for the next Trek movie, Deadline reports that Matt Shankman will direct a script by Lindsay Beer and Gena Robertson-Dworet. However, no release date has been set.
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Roddenberry was also a shameless womanizer, skirt-chaser and notorious credit hog (among other things.) I’d love to see a warts-and-all movie about him, but since this is coming from his son, I can’t imagine that’s going to be the case.Read “Inside Star Trek” by Justman & Solow, it’s a must-read for any fan and truly hilarious and eye-opening. THAT would have made for a great movie.
My understanding is that he started to buy the fan perception of him as an uplifting futurist philosopher or whatever and became sort of an L. Ron Hubbard-lite figure.
Not sure quite how far he got into Hubbard territory, but he definitely decided to believe the press about the “uplifting future” nonsense, which is why he decided, when TNG rolled around, that humanity was a literal utopia and people wouldn’t even disagree with each other.Hence the dramatic shackles he put on the writing staff (no conflict amongst the crew) which was a big detriment to the series.Even though TNG still wound up pretty good, it was only after Roddenberry wasn’t involved in day-to-day.For Roddenberry’s version of TNG, just watch the first season. Yikes.
It’s always kind of weird when people who are incredibly devoted to Roddenberry’s vision focus exclusively on the period right before his death. TOS, which is the series whose success he can claim the most direct responsibility for, features temperamental Bones, arrogant Spock, and a raft of dickhead admirals.
Ron Moore had a good take on this weird reverence for his less creatively fruitful period that was basically a politer version of “yeah, but just because he would have said that doesn’t mean he would have been right.”
“yeah, but just because he would have said that doesn’t mean he would have been right.”
I get sooooo tired of this attitude. Roddenberry was repeatedly proven to have terrible ideas for the franchise. And it’s a stupid way of trying to discount a lot of Star Trek at its best.
And even most of what we love about TOS actually came from Gene Coon, not Roddenberry. Unfortunately, he had already passed away by the time they were making STTMP. I never could get into Next Gen, despite a great cast and writers, just never felt like Star Trek to me.
D.C. Fontana did a lot to create the mythology of Trek too. The fact of the matter is that TOS had a lot of good sci-fi and TV writers who were able to take Rodenberry’s bare-bones ideas and make them work. I’m not going to fully discredit his contributions, though. He did push for ethnic diversity and even wanted to make a woman the second in command. He even let her wear pants instead of a mini-skirt, though he was having an affair with her.
I’m not trying to discount his contributions. He did create the show. He had some really bold, interesting ideas. “The Cage”, which he wrote, is a great script and a great episode.At the same time, he had a lot of terrible ideas and TOS and later TNG became great shows because of the huge contributions of other people.Sadly, almost any other episode of TOS or TNG with his name as a credited writer is, well, not good, and it’s bee well-documented that he was much more of an obstacle to TNG’s quality in those early years.
He rewrote the first TNG episode to be a two parter and threw in all the Q stuff. I think it was Shatner’s ‘Chaos on the Bridge’ doc about the first year of TNG where the producer says about ‘Encounter at Farpoint’, “Tell me what happened. I have no clue.” I think that it might be the thing that drove D.C. Fontana away.
But, without Q, even less happens! They go to an outpost, talk to some people and then…..jellyfish. Huh?
The press release at least has “complex” in there, so I doubt they’re going to simply ignore that stuff. The question of how much one’s sins stack up against one’s accomplishments is always one for a debate.
Problem is the music rights. If they want to use Gene Roddenberry’s iconic hits they have to get permission from the family.
Speaking of music rights, Roddenberry wrote “lyrics” to the Star Trek theme. Which were never recorded or used in any capacity, of course. Just to snare half the royalties for the soundtrack album away from Alexander Courage.
IIRC, his pitch of the Ferengi was that the men had huge dicks and than proceeded to describe all of their various sexual positions until the producers told him to stop.
Honestly, I thought you were kidding until I looked it up on Memory Alpha. Jesus Christ…
He really seems like someone who fell ass-backwards into success, with much of Star Trek: TOS’s brilliance coming from the fact that they hired some of the most brilliant sci fi writers of the time to write some of the scripts. The episodes not written by the better writers are laughably bad. And not only was TOS late 1960s horny, but TNG was late 1980s horny. The first two seasons of TNG are laughably horrible, and the show only improved when some strong writers took a little control.Roddenberry was an interesting guy, and I don’t want to under-credit him for the good ideas he had, but yeah, the movie about him could be interesting. And yes, the casting couch was a thing with Trek.
So many stories about writing Next Gen and DS9 seem to revolve around the writers coming up with an idea and Roddenberry rejecting it because it went against his vision/ideals, only for the writers to slip the idea past and usually end up with the most iconic episodes of the franchise.I guess I’m saying I’d rather see a heist-style film about Ron Moore trying to get “Family” produced.
Well, not DS9 because he was long gone by then (not to be THAT guy.) But, yeah. And “Family” is one of the ones that is so baffling/illuminating. It was a wonderful script, but if the show had moved forward after “The Best of Both Worlds” without even a whiff of acknowledgment about the trauma Picard suffered, it would have been ridiculous.
The Stan Lee of ‘60s television. Just about everything we like about Star Trek was created by Gene Coon.
I’m sure this film will gloss over his many faults and focus on his vision of the future.
his vision of the future:
A jetpack in every American garage!
No mention of Roddenberry cheating on his wives, abusing at least one of his wives, and making frequent use of the casting couch? Do these new writers not know how this place works?
It’s all right. He didn’t change a twitter avatar or go to a pageant in 1990s founded eighty years ago by a racist, so AVC’s cool with it.
But did he ever get accused of doing something wrong on Twitter, by people who completely ignored all context? Huh?? DID HE??
Make it a Galaxy Quest situation.
Most hardcore Star Trek fans already know a lot about his life, and I can’t imagine how they would market this to anyone else.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman would have been perfect, but now I would love to see a shaved Galifianakis go full dramatic Oscar turn playing a warts-and-all Roddenberry.Also, what are the odds the movie will be titled Live Long & Prosper?
Is society ready for a shaved Galifianakis? Wait, does Gillette even have the technology to shave Galifianakis?
Set your phasers to… shave!
“He needs equipment to lose his hair? Amateur.”- Sir Patrick Stewart, OBE.
Master Thespian!
The on-set make-up people would need to shave him between shots as well as touch up his make-up.
You can take the boy outta Greece…
They’d need six, maybe seven blades to handle Galifianakis’s beard.I am an expert on this subject, having had people tell me no less than twice that I look like Galifianakis.
From what others are sharing it might be Live Long & Boner
Nice try troll. That is clearly a picture of Robert Redford, circa 1972.
Smart money’s on a cheap half-version meant to sound inspirational, either “Live Long,” or “& Prosper”
I hope they cast Patrick Stewart as Patrick Stewart. Dude looks the same. God bless him.
He doesn’t really, though. Most people say that men who lost their hair early or whose hair went gray very early (like Steve Martin) look “so young.”
Because, obviously, hair is a huge signifier of age. When one had “old person hair” at a young age, we think, “boy, they haven’t changed!”But, come on, look past his head. Patrick Stewart looks pretty damn old. He’s 81, he’s entitled.
Yeah, if you actually look at his face, you can see the age. Then again, we’re talking about the 30 year gap between TNG and now.
I can’t help thinking that if Roddenberry hadn’t died so (relatively) early in the franchise’s history, then we probably wouldn’t be lionizing him so much. Like George Lucas and JK Rowling, if he were still around messing everything up and reminding us all what terrible ideas he had for Star Trek.
On the other hand, if he hadn’t passed when he did, would we have even gotten DS9 pretty much at all?
Good thing he died before we found out he’s a trans-phobic, anti-vaxxxer.
From the Star Trek oral history The Fifty-Year Mission:‘He came back from Japan with Majel and he said to me, “You know, Ande, you can go from the front to the back but you can’t go from the back to the front. Majel’s got a heck of an infection.” Again, why are you telling me this? But that was him: freaky-deaky dude.’
I’m just surprised that this wasn’t pitched as a three season series with the potential for several spin-offs.
That Shatner’s a vampire! He doesn’t age I tells ya!
I am sure he thinks he is the perfect casting choice for a young William Shatner. He probably still has the Kirk hairpieces in his closet. Just needs to order that extra strength girdle.
Oh, that reminded me of a guy from my community theater years who had a series of pieces ranging from the “I’ve just had a haircut piece” to the “I’m so shaggy and need a haircut piece” and at least one in between.
If this is coming from the Roddenberry company, I suspect a great whitewash is coming. They may allude to his philandering. I doubt that they’re going to show how he was willing to bilk his audience out of every penny and give his personal staff ‘promotions’ instead of raises. He created a great franchise that soared under the leadership of other people, but he was also an ass.