How the Viacom split complicated things.

In 2006, Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp. formally split into two separate companies. While Viacom Inc. (more specifically, its subsidiary Paramount) kept the movie rights to Star Trek, CBS got the TV rights. Speaking at the Deutsche Bank Media, Internet, and Telecom Conference earlier this year (via TrekCore), CBS Corp. President Les Moonves explained how the split went down:

When [CBS] split from Viacom ten years ago, January 1, 2006, one of the big sticking points, as you can imagine, was Star Trek. You know, we both wanted it. They said ‘It’s a movie!’ and I said, ‘No, no, no, it’s a TV show.’ Actually, we’re both right. So they kept the feature film rights, we kept the television rights; they have [Star Trek Beyond] coming out July 22. Our deal with them is that we had to wait six months after their film is launched so there wouldn’t be a confusion in the marketplace.

This six-month buffer explains why Star Trek: Discoverywas initially scheduled to premiere in January 2017 (it has since been pushed back to May 2017, though we’re skeptical about that date, too), versus premiering sometime in the 50th anniversary year. With Star Trek Beyondcoming out in July 2016, January 2017 was the earliest Discoverycould premiere, given the six-month terms of the CBS/Paramount agreement. This is only one example of the bureacracy and limits that have been imposed upon the Star Trekuniverse due to its fractured rights.

It’s unclear how or if the next Star Trekmovie would affect the (hopefully) ongoing Star Trek: Discoverymoving forward. Or vice versa.

Is there a chance CBS & Paramount could work something out?

Can’t Paramount and CBS just pull a Marvel & Sony and get along? Apparently not. (#ItsComplicated) According to this The Wrap article, J.J. Abrams left the Star Trekreboot franchise in part because of his frustration over not being able to spin the films out into a larger media universe (including TV). An anonymous source told The Wrap:

J.J. just threw up his hands. The message was, ‘Why set up all this when we’ll just be competing against ourselves?’ The studio wanted to please Bad Robot, but it was allowing CBS to say yay or nay when it came to what was happening with the Star Trek products.

Specifically, the CBS merchandising branch continues to make and sell merchandise based on the original incarnation of the Trek universe, which Bad Robot found confused viewers of the reboot films. When they asked CBS to stop, talks eventually broke down when the two corporate entities couldn’t come to a financial agreement.