1. Peters' Settlement Aims to Shut Down Jenkins' Doc, Reacquire Axanar Rights

• Renounce the copyrights he registered with the U.S. Copyright Office in August for the two fictional "Four Years War" documentary scripts that comprise Axanar (see our October 12 newsletter, "Peters' amended lawsuit still suffers from fundamental flaws"), and not seek any other copyright interest in anything related to Axanar.
• Grant a license for Peters exclusively to use any Axanar-related material Jenkins worked on. Without such a license, Peters would otherwise likely be unable to use most the Axanar footage he's already shot using Jenkins' script.
• Destroy copies of the CBS-Axanar settlement that's part of Jenkins' fraud allegations against Peters (see October 17 newsletter, "[Settlement] disclosure seems to confirm fundraising, merchandising violations by Peters").
• Identify who leaked the CBS settlement to Jenkins (view here).
• Remove CBS' settlement, and all references to it, from court records.
• Give up the documentary or any production featuring Peters and Axanar, such as the one Jenkins is planning with Axanar's other two former directors, Christian Gossett and Robert Meyer Burnett. Gossett and Burnett are specifically named in Peters' offer.
• Remove Peters from all Jenkins' published statements, along with Axanar and Ares Studios, especially the August 8 press release that's the source of Peters' defamation claims against Jenkins.
• Never disparage Peters, Axanar or Ares Studios.

• Remove any mention of Jenkins and his production company from all sources controlled by Peters, including the Axanar website and all his YouTube channels.
• Nix his own documentary or any other production that might be refer to Jenkins or his production company.
• Never disparage Jenkins or META Studios, his production company.

2. Lawyer Analyzes Peters’ ‘Weak Nothingburger’ of a Settlement Offer to ex-Axanar Director Jenkins

• Toothpaste back in the tube. Peters' settlement proposes to "put the toothpaste back in the tube" by stopping Jenkins' documentary, canceling the copyright that threatens the Axanar production, and removing from the public record the once-secret CBS settlement behind which Peters hid his multiple and ongoing breaches, particularly surrounding selling merchandise and public fundraising.
• Threatening someone else. The deal would require Jenkins to reveal who leaked the CBS settlement, "hoping to find a new target to threaten."

• Side-stepping copyright registration. The attorney observes that granting Peters an exclusive license would allow to Peters to sidestep the CBS prohibition against him seeking to register copyright for any element of Axanar.
• Suing for infringement. "As exclusive licensee, he would have the right to sue anyone who infringed the copyright in the work," the attorney said. "Alec, as an exclusive licensee, has the legal ability to sign a new copyright application for Jenkins' work. … He wouldn’t need Jenkins' permission."
• Jenkins gives up his copyright. An exclusive license, if made perpetual, means Jenkins can no longer use his work himself. "The nature of an exclusive license is that it is exclusive even as to the licensor," the attorney states. "You are violating the license if you do something with your own [work] that is covered by the license you granted [another]."

• Bad faith? Moreover, the attorney asks, "Even if Alec takes everything down, that isn’t going to stop him from talking shit about Jenkins publicly." Given Peters' demonstrated breaches of the CBS settlement, he would ask Jenkins, "Would you trust Alec Peters to honor the settlement of your counterclaim that revolved around his failure to honor another settlement he agreed to?”

3. Will Lane's New Axanar 'Trailer' Breathe Life into the Project's Moribund Crowdfunding Campaign?

• Not much new. The eight-minute long video was cut together by Fan Film Factor and Axanar supporter Jonathan Lane this past summer. Lane has more recently begun to disavow some of Peters' activities, including his secret Trollhunters that targets his enemies.
  • Recycled footage. Sharp-eyed viewers will recognize how the video recycles footage from Prelude to Axanar, including Richard Hatch's Klingon character Kharn. Hatch, who passed away in 2017, cannot appear in the Axanar short.
  • Recycled VFX. Some of the admittedly impressive visual effects also come from Prelude, or were created for the never-to-be-made Axanar feature under the direction of Robert Meyer Burnett. Some of the visual effects were nothing more than animatics — rough pre-visualizations of VFX not yet created.
• Unhappy. Burnett was not impressed with what he saw, posting in the AxaMonitor Facebook group: "I can't believe how he's just squandering all the VFX I spent months directing with [VFX creator] Tobias [Richter], repeating the same material over and over again. Peters and Lane failed to understand, he said, "these VFX were supposed to be intercut with live-action footage designed to work with a narrative and not a documentary-style film."
  • Fake reviews. The trailer features actors shot more than a year ago commenting on how amazing the film is, even though there was no film at the time their interviews were shot; they had nothing to base an opinion on.
  • Professional set. The interviewed actors go on about how professional the set was run under Jenkins' direction. Yet Peters' continues to claim Jenkins' work was unprofessional.

• Starting over. Of course, given Jenkins' copyright claims over the script and footage shot so far, Peters may have to raise his production budget from scratch, hence his eagerness to get Jenkins to settle.
• Stalled fundraiser. Since May 18, the Axanar fundraiser has raised an average $25 a day overall, but more recently in the past month, the daily average has fallen to $5.17. At that rate, it will take a little more than five years to reach its goal.
• Peters admitted to Jenkins, as reflected in the ex-director's counterclaim, that Peters depends on content like trailers and behind-the-scenes footage to create the appearance of progress and encourage fundraising — even though public appeals are prohibited by the CBS settlement.
• Copyright issues. This trailer itself may run afoul of Jenkins'  copyright, as it may be considered a derivative work of his copyrighted script, and the copyright holder could have YouTube take it down by filing a DCMA claim. The trailer may be a test of whether Jenkins would assert his copyright.
• Actual release? Though shown as part of his livestream Wednesday, Peters promised to formally release it Thursday. At press time, it remained unreleased on either the Axanar or Ares Studios YouTube channels.