Perhaps the biggest reason Leonard Nimoy refused “Star Trek: Generations” was that he could not get Paramount Pictures to agree to get a rewrite of the script. According to “Generations” producer Rick Berman, who started his work on the “Star Trek” franchise with the project, Nimoy was unhappy with the film’s script from the get-go. Recalling his work on the film, Berman said Paramount head Sherry Lansing told him to get Nimoy to direct the film. However, any bid for further work on the existing script was a non-starter.
“It had gone through a lot of rewrites and the studio loved it and they basically felt it was a shooting script,” Berman said in “The Fifty-Year Mission.” “When Leonard read it, he said, ‘This needs a page-one rewrite.’ I told him that that was not the way we were planning to do this and that’s not the way it was scheduled, and we parted ways.” The film was eventually directed by David Carson, whose work included four episodes of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
Berman admitted that, in retrospect, he wished he had done things differently and Nimoy should have had a chance to do something with the script. “I was not experienced enough to actually know that,” the producer said. “If he had suggested that he wanted to work on the script it would have been one thing, but he kind of had a page-one rewrite sort of attitude.”
Although he didn’t get to direct “Generations” or tweak its script, Nimoy had a chance to pass Spock’s torch to fellow actor Zachary Quinto in director J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek” reboot in 2009.
