Leonard Nimoy's Son Needs To Crowdfund Money For Spock Documentary... To License Photos And Videos

from the come-on-cbs-and-paramount dept

As you may have heard, Leonard Nimoy's son Adam Nimoy is working on what sounds like an incredible and touching documentary called "For the Love of Spock" -- about both the Star Trek character of Spock and about Leonard Nimoy's career (for the none of you who don't already know this, Nimoy played the iconic Mr. Spock in the TV show and movies). It had begun as a documentary just about the character of Spock, but after Leonard Nimoy passed away earlier this year, the focus has expanded to cover his life as well. It sounds really great, but Adam is trying to raise $600,000 on Kickstarter to make it happen. There are a lot of reasonable expenses included in that $600k, but one stood out to me: the need to license images and footage of Nimoy:

It will also enable us to license the hundreds of film clips and still photographs of Mr. Spock as he has appeared on television and in feature films over the last fifty years.

It's worth noting that part of the thinking behind this was to get the documentary out in time for the 50th anniversary of the original Star Trek. In other words, if anything, this documentary is only going to help draw a lot more attention to the whole Star Trek franchise which can only be good for the rightsholders. In other words, the fact that the rightsholders haven't stepped up and just granted a free license to Adam Nimoy is ridiculous and short-sighted.

Admittedly, the rights behind Star Trek are a little muddled due to the CBS/Viacom corporate split a decade ago, with each company still owning pieces. But, either way, it seems that both CBS and Viacom/Paramount Pictures should recognize that they stand to benefit greatly from having this documentary. The idea that they can't sort this out themselves and give Nimoy the photos and clips he needs seems ridiculous.

Supporting this documentary seems like a great idea -- and it sounds like much of the money will go towards all of the other important work in putting together an excellent end product. It just seems ridiculous that at least a decent chunk of the money has to be used to pay off CBS and/or Paramount to convince them to let Nimoy make a movie that will only help their own bottom line.

Filed Under: adam nimoy, crowdfunding, documentary, leonard nimoy, licensing, spock
Companies: cbs, paramount, viacom