Fresh off the closing of the Star Trek: Axanar crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, website dedicated to the famous sci-fi series, TrekMovie, sat down with producer and actor in the upcoming film, Alec Peters to discuss the project and his ultimate dream of creating a Star Trek film.
According to the campaign’s website, Axanar takes place 21 years before the events of “Where no man has gone before.” The story revolves around legendary Starfleet Captain, Garth of Izar, who is Captain Kirk’s hero and role model for the next generation of Starfleet officers. Garth was known to have charted more planets than any other captain and was a the hero behind the Battle of Axanar.
The independent “Star Trek” film which proves that a feature-quality film of the hit series that can be made on a small budget. The Axanar Production’s team 20-minute short film, Prelude to Axanar premiered on Saturday, July 26th, at the San Diego Comic Con and featured Riachard Hatch, Tony Todd, Kate Veron, JG Hertzler, along with Gary Graham, who reprised his role as “Enterprise’s” Soval.
Unlike the short film, which was put together in two days and cost the team only $80,000, the 90-minute Axanar feature will take about three weeks and cost roughly between $650,000 and $750,000. With only a goal of $100,000, the production team’s first crowdfunding campaign was a huge hit and raised $638,471 by 8,548 backers.
Explaining the budgets and why the team turned to Kickstarter with such a small goal, Peters stated, “The $650,000 figure is a rough guess of what our budget will be for the full length feature. It will probably be a little more. One of the things on Prelude is that we learned a lot. We spent four times as much as we expected to spend, but we originally expected to be a ‘fan film’ and now I don’t think many people consider it just a fan film. So for the full length feature, we want to make sure we knock it out of the park for the high bar that we have established for independent Star Trek… So for the fest of the budget, I don’t know if we will go back to Kickstarter. I think we are in a powerful position right now to be able to create a method for our donors for us to get the rest.”
“First hundred is going to the seats, the next hundred and a quarter is going to the sound-stage, etc. We strive to be accountable and transparent, which is the right thing to do. And if you go back to Prelude we were pretty specific about where we were spending the money and we are getting ready now to actually publish the budget for Prelude to Axanar for the donors to see.”
Also discussing his role as Garth of Izar, Peters noted, “That puts a lot of pressure on, because of what we did and how good Prelude was. I was fully prepared to step aside and just produce. I had that conversation with Christian where I said, ‘If you don’t think I can do this, we will get someone else.’ I have been in acting class for two years with Richard Hatch as my acting coach, because you got to prepare. Prelude was a test of what we can do and what I can do. I know I can produce, Prelude proves that, but the question is: could I act? It is scary to be the weakest link in the chain. And it was great because Gary Graham said to me, ‘You know Alec, there were a lot of people on the set who were really worried you were not going to be able to pull it off, but I have to say I was really impressed. You did amazing work.’ I knew Richard was going to say good things because I am his student, but for Gary that totally unsolicited told me that I hit the mark OK.”
In regards to releasing the film next summer, Peters added, “it will be kind of like we did with Prelude. We had a red carpet premiere at San Diego Comic-Con, then our donors got exclusive access to it online. And then we released it on Kickstarter and now it is publicly on our YouTube page.”
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