'Star Trek' Creator Gene Roddenberry Is Getting His Own Biopic
Gene Roddenberry's inclusive vision for Star Trek was decades ahead of its time and influenced countless people across a myriad number of professions and art forms. Now the spotlight will be turned from the show he created to the man himself, as a Gene Roddenberry biopic is officially in development.
To Boldly Go Where No Biopic Has Gone Before
According to Variety, Roddenberry Entertainment (the company that executive produces every current Star Trek series) is working on a Gene Roddenberry biopic, with Gene's son, Rod Roddenberry, executive producing alongside Trevor Roth (Star Trek: Discovery). Adam Mazer, whose screenwriting credits include the 2007 Ryan Phillippe action film Breach, the Jack Kevorkian HBO movie You Don't Know Jack, a Dwayne Johnson action movie called Empire State that basically doesn't exist, and a made-for-TV movie about the NXIVM cult, is writing the script. He feels like an odd choice for a project like this, but every time I have that thought, I remember that Craig Mazin (The Hangover sequels) felt like a weird choice to make HBO's Chernobyl, and that ended up working out splendidly. Let's hope this movie will be Mazer's Chernobyl.
Variety says the film "will cover Roddenberry's life before and after creating Star Trek, which was notable at the time for its diverse cast and was threatened with cancellation after the second season before becoming a massive worldwide franchise. The project will also cover his survival of two plane crashes and the events leading to his death just as Star Trek: The Next Generation was becoming the most successful series of the franchise." I had no idea Roddenberry survived a single plane crash, let alone two of them; that fact alone feels like enough of a reason for someone to deserve a biopic, but instead it sounds like it will just be one aspect of his more wide-ranging life story.
"Gene lead a remarkable life," Roddenberry and Roth said in a statement on what would have been the man's 100th birthday. "He was an incredibly complex, compelling man, whose work changed the face of television, and whose ideas changed the world. It's time to share Gene's story with audiences everywhere."
There is no studio or streaming home for the project yet, but it would feel cosmically appropriate if Paramount picked it up, since the original Trek series was produced by Desilu Productions, which was later rebranded into Paramount Television. Paramount still holds the distribution rights to all new Star Trek movies, and making a biopic about a man who made the company untold sums of money would be a nice way to tip the cap to him and honor his legacy.