A Paramount exec didn’t use their eyes to see that Event Horizon would be nothing like Star Trek, so they confronted director Paul W.S. Anderson about the similarities.
How a person could be pitched the cosmic horror Event Horizon and think that, just because it’s a Paramount project set in space, it would have any crossover with Star Trek, is beyond us. We doubt that any moviegoer watched Event Horizon and invoked the Enterprise crew while characters were gouging out their own eyes and engaging in a bloody space-orgy—unless they hated Star Trek and fantasized about Kirk or Picard doing the same (in which case, the executive had a point).
“Someone actually said to me, ‘We’re the studio that makes Star Trek!'” Anderson recalled to Variety.
“They weren’t only horrified by my movie; they felt I was besmirching Star Trek somehow, because I was also in space and doing all this terrible stuff.”
Still, cinematic space is not owned by Star Trek, nor is it exempt from zero-gravity blood orgies. Thankfully, Paramount came to those conclusions and went through with Anderson’s idea, although with some revulsion:
“I think Paramount was a little shocked. It had all this gross horror and all these disturbing images. I don’t think anyone at the studio had really seen that stuff before because I was shooting in England. Generally, people from the studio watch what the main unit shoots, but all of the horror stuff was being done second unit, directed by me on the weekends.
I don’t think anyone at the studio actually watched the second unit material, so they hadn’t seen all the impalings and all the other people getting their eyes out and the intestines. I got a lot of tough notes.”
Live long and prosper off scary space movies!
