Time for some background. Shortly after Star Trek: Enterprise went off the air in 2005, CBS was split off from Viacom to eliminate what Viacom thought was an unhealthy company. The move was spearheaded by National Amusements (a company that owns stock in other companies), then owned by Sumner Redstone, as at the time CBS was considered very un-healthy and a drag on Viacom's value. This split also gave National Amusement a significant ownership in CBS too. This ownership stake is why you have never heard reports of Viacom or CBS ever considering merging with any other media company.
The result of the split is the movie rights to Star Trek remained with Viacom owned Paramount while the TV rights remained with CBS. A side effect of that move was apparently a moratorium on making TV shows as long as Paramount intended to move forward with movies which eventually did in the 2009 reboot movie. In that time the once unhealthy CBS became a TV force to be reckoned with growing in value to $18 billion that exceeds $12 billion value for Viacom. In the last 10 years with merging all media companies into mega-corporations (Disney/Fox/ABC, AT&T/NBC) it made sense for CBS and Viacom to re-merge. In addition, Sumner died leaving National Amusements to his daughter Shari Redstone. Once she gained ownership, she started pushing for a merger.
However, those talks stalled for 4 or so year not because no one thought the merger was a bad idea but because of clash of personalities. Shari Redstone wanted her choice to run the merged company and that choice was not then CBS CEO Les Moonves. Moonves was considered a natural choice considered he spearheaded CBS's turnaround that turned Viacom's divesting of CBS into a mistake. As a result, he was able to successfully block the merger with CBS board support since Viacom would have been a drag on CBS' value (oh the irony). That all changed last year when Moonves was fired from his position as multiple reports of sexual harassment emerged and he was replaced with a Redstone approved choice. While many think the #MeToo movement was why the reports came forward, the timing is just wonky enough that my general advice is don't mess with Shari Redstone. Advice others have taken as she clearly dictated this merger as CBS conceded ground on all fronts (even the name!) despite their superior market value.
This then leads to the question of "what does this mean for Star Trek now that is under one company again?" Short answer is nothing right now. The TV side is full steam ahead with four shows in the pipeline for next year. On the movie front still has Paramount sitting on two scripts. One based on a concept from Quentin Tarantino but not written by him. The only way it will be made is if he is willing to direct. Problem is Tarantino long promised to direct only 10 films and he just released his 9th film. I would be truly shocked if he decided his final film would be a Star Trek film. I suspect he is shooting for executive producer credit but avoid directing it. The other script is a non-starter as the cost to produce is too high as currently written to cast.
Its unlikely a real movie decision will be made by Paramount until after the merger completes at the end of the year. After that they will force Tarantino to make his directing decision. Assuming he bows out, the smart decision is to streamline the executive org chart for all things Star Trek. One of the reasons Marvel TV and movie output works so well is the executive hierarchy is incredibly streamlined. There is whoever is in charge of the movie/TV project who reports to Kevin Feige who in turns reports to Disney CEO Robert Iger. If $130 billion Disney can have that kind of a streamlined process, there is absolutely no reason that ViacomCBS cannot (and yeah I am looking at you too Warner Bros.). To many executive cooks in the kitchen just means they all want to add their (mostly) worthless two cents to everything, muddying the waters, so when things succeed they can all take credit and when it fails they can point fingers at everyone but themselves.
CBS started the process by creating the Star Trek Global Franchise Group with all Star Trek TV executive producer Alex Kurtzman* reporting to CBS Executive VP Veronica Hart who reports to CBS Television Studios President David Staph who reports to... So probably compared to how it use to be, its streamlined but still about five executives too deep and its about the same on the movie side. Hopefully part of the plans will include making that two prong (one for TV, one for movies) into a much more concise org chart to the top. If it occurs a natural choice will be to anoint Alex Kurtzman as Trek's "Kevin Feige". Not sure how I feel about that particular possibility but to be fair he seems to be learning and getting better at all things Trek.
In the long term, merging Star Trek was one of the strategic reasons behind the merger. The goal is clearly to make Star Trek a worldwide franchise with marketing power equal to or greater then Marvel. Paramount has tried to do that with the films to little success and that failure is part of the reason why they are so slow to pull the trigger on a 4th movie as potential international success for a film is now more important then how it will do stateside. Instead (as the group name indicates) the goal is to let the TV side lead the way. My understanding is Star Trek: Discovery is doing decently internationally with its presence on Netflix around the world. The new Trek shows will also appear worldwide. Worldwide penetration will take time and money but hopefully the newly merged company will be willing to risk the money where Viacom alone was not. Too early to say.
*Side thought - People forget that Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci where long time working partners. Orci was the deep Trek fan while calling Kurtzman a casual fan would be an exaggeration. What in the world happened that got Roberto Orci ousted from...well all of Hollywood?!?.
great work..awesome
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