MovieChat Forums > 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Discussion > What if Roddenberry, Trumball, Clarke & ...

What if Roddenberry, Trumball, Clarke & Kubrick had teamed up?

posted 4 years ago by christomacin (4730)
3 replies | jump to latest

after 1968 and formed a production company, using the popular Star Trek series as a vehicle to push SFX and serious science fiction? The market for big budget high tech sci-fi was clearly there, but the studios seem risk adverse and preferred the safer medium to low budget dystopian sci-fi films like Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, etc. instead. There might perhaps have been a 2001 sequel and the Star Trek series would have started a full decade earlier. There would have been no 10-year gap between 2001 and Star Wars (maybe no Star Wars at all). 2001 was a major blockbuster hit (one of the more successful films of the 60s, in fact) so it always amazed me that there was no real attempt to follow up on its success. Perhaps the studios had the feeling that they couldn't compete with the real life moon landings people could watch for free on television? Lucas ultimately pulled it off because he started his own SFX company and was willing to take the risks and had the vision the studios lacked. I realize Kubrick didn't want there to be a sequel and had the sets destroyed, but perhaps he could have been persuaded to join Trumball, Clarke, and Roddenberry as a silent partner even if no further 2001 films were made. This venture could have proved very profitable and a built-in audience already existed for Star Trek.

[–] jonathan_k80 (6436) 4 years ago

If the four could have worked together, some amazing productions could have resulted. However, there can be problems when four creative types team up. There most likely would have been personality clashes and differences of opinion on what direction to take. Think the Beatles. Kubrick was already out, and I doubt if anyone could have persuaded him to change his mind.

Then there is the problem of funding. The big studios wouldn't have wanted to risk it. By that time, Star Trek was on its last legs, and not because there was anything wrong with the program. NBC just cancelled it in early 1969 because it wasn't getting the ratings the network wanted. It was only through the persistence it its die-hard fans that the franchise remained alive. The team of creators would have had to finance the production themselves and find a willing distributor.

I agree with your post. There's so much that could have been.

[–] christomacin (4730) 4 years ago

It probably wouldn't have worked out, but they would have been the only ones that could if only in theory have pulled it off before Lucas.

[–] Darren (1456) 4 years ago

Kubrick never would have shared creative control in the way Roddenberry would have demanded. Roddenberry was notorious, for example, for rewriting just about any script that ever passed through his hands in order to get credit, and to be fair, he genuinely improved some stories, but a lot of times this worked to the story's detriment. He was so famous for it, that one writer (I wish I could remember who it was) I read about it actually got it into his contract that Roddenberry couldn't rewrite his scripts. Gene did it anyway.

I can't see a pefectionist like Kubrick, who had to have everything just so, right down to the last details, putting up with someone who would meddle with his work to the extent Roddenberry unquestionably would have. For that matter I can't see what would ever have drawn Kubrick to Roddenberry's work in the first place. He wasn't particulary drawn to sci fi, and having produced his magnum opus in the genre, I think he did all he ever intended to do in that genre. And even if he hadn't, Roddenberry was good at coming up with general concepts for a show like Star Trek, but not actually all that great at writing original stories. Of his sole-credit original stories for TOS, "The Cage" (later reworked as "The Menagerie") "Mudd's Women," "The Savage Curtain," "Turnabout Intruder," "Charlie X." "The Return of the Archons," and "The Omega Glory," only "The Cage/Menagerie" stands out among the series' best episodes, and some of them (e.g. "The Omega Glory," "The Savage Curtain") are actually pretty awful.

I think if Kubrick ever had a notion to do more scifi, he'd have gone back to Clarke for inspiration, or one of the other grand masters like Heinlein or Asimov, or maybe Philip K. Dick. I really don't think he would even have looked at Roddenberry's work.