PREVIEW: Fathom’s Dan Diamond on ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ in movie theaters

The Star Trek fire will never die. First ignited in the 1960s with Star Trek: The Original Series, Gene Roddenberry’s baby has spawned multiple TV series, movies, merchandise and fan events. And now Trekkers can celebrate the 25th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the successful TV show starring Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

Fathom Events, the premier presenter of unique cinematic experiences, will offer a special movie theater event on Monday, July 23 at 7 p.m. Fans can expect to see two popular TNG episodes (“Where No One Has Gone Before” and “Datalore”) beautifully restored and paired with exclusive content for the one-night-only event. The special evening coincides with the official Blu-ray release of Star Trek: TNG’s season one from CBS Home Entertainment.

Recently, Hollywood Soapbox talked with Dan Diamond, senior vice president of business development for Fathom, about what fans can expect from the cinematic event. Questions and answers have been slightly edited.

How did the 25th anniversary event originate?

It really began in conversations we’ve had ongoing with CBS for a number of years. We actually did their prior release of the first Star Trek series, where we created a unique theater event to celebrate the release of that. It featured the original pilot of the Star Trek series, “The Menagerie,” along with special cast interviews and all kinds of things that were created just for the theaters.

It went over so well that this next big opportunity came along around the 25^th anniversary of Next Generation, the folks at CBS reached out to us immediately and said, ‘Hey, why don’t we do another one?’ Because Star Trek fans really enjoyed the first one, and what we’re seeing so far is that they’re extremely excited about this one coming up.

Of all the big fan communities, Star Trek won’t die. I imagine it will be a pretty successful event?

That’s certainly our hope. All the trends seem to be indicating. We’re seeing lots of traffic to the web site. We’re seeing the blogs heat up. We’re seeing ticket sales start very strongly. We’re very excited.

Back when I was in college, watching Star Trek at 4 in the afternoon, and this was back in the ‘70s, was appointment TV. We skipped classes to make sure that we watched Star Trek. I had roommates that basically built every scale model of every spaceship that was in the galaxy at the time, that was surrounding the series. I think it’s a real testament to the fans here that no matter what their age, Star Trek has always been something that has stimulated our imaginations and touched an emotional chord within so many of us.

These events in movie theaters give fans a chance to gather as communities, meet others throughout that same excitement and inspirations from these types of programs … and have a great night out at the movie theaters.

How did the company select the two episodes to be aired?

They were handpicked by the folks at CBS and the people who did the restorations, basically turning these from their original format into high definition for the movie theaters. These were two of the most popular fan favorite episodes. So they were picked basically on what would be the best material from a source standpoint, from the standpoint of the multi million-dollar restoration team that undertook this, Mike and Denise Okuda, and also from the perspective of the fan base that had let the folks at CBS know which ones over time were really their favorite episodes.

And they will be paired with other material?

What Fathom does for every event is to try to create a really unique, one-of-a-kind experience for fans. Not only are we going to show these two episodes, but they’ll be tied together with interviews with the restoration team. There will be other unique content and never-before-seen material in and around it, really giving fans, excuse the pun, taking them on a journey, if you will, through this entire process and taking them behind the scenes so that they can really understand.

What I think is very cool from a technical standpoint: to turn that older technology into something that is high definition on movie theater screens todays. It also takes advantage in many, many cases of the new digital technology that’s available in theaters that didn’t exist even two to three years ago. For an audience that’s very tech-savvy and that’s also very imaginative and excited about what the possibilities that Star Trek showed us all, I think the opportunity to see it with the latest technology in the movie theater, like it’s never been seen before, is really the ideal marriage of technology and content for fans.

From an executive level, are you happy with the progress of Fathom Events?

We’re extremely pleased with the progress that we’ve seen, very, very excited about (what) fans of all interests have conveyed to us, in terms of their excitement over the programs that they see either on our schedule or that they’ve attended. At the end of the day, what we endeavor to do is to continue to create unique, one-of-a-kind cinema experiences and turn the local movie theaters into local community event centers.

Something like RiffTrax, the Mystery Science Theater guys doing their thing on the big screen so fans can connect them with what their doing with a movie like Manos. Again, it just continues to grow year over year. Singin’ in the Rain for classic movie enthusiasts is much like what we did earlier in the year with Casablanca. It’s selling extremely well and giving families a chance to come back. I know for me, being able to take my kids and say, ‘Hey, you know what? I want you to see one of the greatest movies of all time in a movie theater.’

Star Trek, when I think about it, really led to a lot of the innovations today, when you think about our tablets and our cell phones. They used to walk around the deck of the Enterprise with all these little gadgets and gizmos. And we’d go, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be cool to have that.’ And now we all have those. So we can consume content in so many ways, but the thing we can’t do very effectively with all of our technological tools is gather as communities and really go out and have fun together. And that’s what’s so great about what Fathom is able to do with our content partners in bringing these programs to theaters. So fans of all types of hobbies and interests, the things that excite them the most, they can come to movie theaters and gather as a community and have an experience like no other.

Can you give a preview of Fathom’s upcoming events?

Coming up is a very exciting and timely lineup of some of the greatest classics from the big screen appearing on our Fathom programming lineup. We’ll also be entering into our seventh season with the Metropolitan Opera. We’ve got some exciting sports coming up in the fall. I think you’ll be seeing some announcements shortly about some new and exciting Broadway programs that are coming to movie theaters.

The great thing about what we get to do here is really create something that hasn’t been done before and try to bring fans across the country the kinds of shows and experiences in theaters that they just can’t get some place else.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

• Star Trek: The Next Generation 25th Anniversary Event will take place Monday, July 23 at 7 p.m. in movie theaters across the country. Select theaters will also run a late-night showing. Click here for more information and a list of participating theaters.