5 Movie Trailers That Led To Lawsuits
Those movie trailers that brought on the wrong sort of publicity...
Evidenced in the fact that this is certainly not the first time WhatCulture has covered those times movies have been hit by lawsuits, be that due to certain scenes or even posters, the filmmaking industry doesn't half have a habit of getting caught up in legal trouble when it pertains to a big screen project.
Yet, it isn't just the finished product or the prints found slapped on the front of cinemas or clogging up your Twitter feed that have been called out and sued for a whole host of reasons. In some cases, even the two-minute slices of promotional material used to sell a film to an audience have been the cause of more than a few p*ssed off folks demanding compensation and/or justice.
Simply put, what can at first seem like a harmless way to convince fans to line up to see their incoming blockbuster, romcom, or gritty noir can soon land a studio in the doghouse and earn them a day in court.
From fan-made sci-fi epics drawing unwanted attention from the big boys, to plain old false advertising brassing off the paying public, these movie trailers were likely more trouble than they were worth when all was said and done.
5. Fan Made Star Trek Film Is Stopped In Its Tracks By Paramount After Trailer - Star Trek: Axanar
YouTube has become the home of many a creative and innovative fan-made spin-off over the years, with everything from Star Wars to The Lord of the Rings getting the D.I.Y. treatment as time has gone by. But in Star Trek: Axanar, Alec Peters and Axanar Productions seemed to have had their sights set on completely breaking the fan-made mould.
On the back of an eye-catching prelude in 2014, aptly named Prelude to Axanar, dropping online and garnering a whopping 1.7 million views, Peters was able to bring in an eye-watering $1 million on Kickstarter and Indiegogo to finance a full blown Star Trek spin-off feature. However, as soon as Paramount and CBS caught wind of what was going down, the two filed a lawsuit seeking damages for Peters and his production team infringing their rights by using the Klingon language in the modestly-budgeted fan-film and "innumerable copyrighted elements of Star Trek, including its settings, characters, species, and themes".
The suit was ultimately settled in the end as Peters and his team announced they would be making "substantial changes" to their prequel in 2017. The terms found in this new agreement between the two parties stated that Peters would be allowed to make two separate 15-minute shorts, instead of the 90-minute feature expected, and commercials would not be allowed to be present during the flick.
Though, Axanar is still yet to boldly go as of writing...