20 Things You Didn't Know About Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan (1982)

20. A Studio Executive Proposed Publishing The Novelization With Multiple Endings To Avoid Spoilers

On December 14, 1981, Star Trek II was in the midst of principal photography, and Arthur Barron was getting nervous. Barron was a Paramount executive involved with the Star Trek novel line, an important source of ancillary revenue for the studio. In order to capitalize on the upcoming publicity campaign and sell the most books, the film’s novelization would have to go into work soon.

Barron fired off a memo to his boss, Paramount President and CEO Michael Eisner, outlining the issues at hand with the book. On the plus side, Barron wrote, “Gene Roddenberry and Leonard Maizlish are not involved in the script and Roddenberry has no rights as to novelization except to share in earnings." Roddenberry was reportedly paid $400,000 to write the novelization for Star Trek—The Motion Picture, which featured some bizarre ideas, most notoriously, Captain Kirk’s “love instructor.” The studio was in no mood to repeat that experience

On the negative side, Barron noted, as soon as the book hit store shelves, the ending of the movie would be out in the wild. To get around this pitfall, he suggested the following:

Could an ingenious scheme be developed whereby you had a book with two or more endings which could be published prior to the movie, but nobody would know which ending was the movie?

In the end, the book came out with only one ending — possibly because Roddenberry had leaked the script and rumors about Spock’s fate were rampant among fans long before the movie was released.