The Move to Alec Peters’ Former Home Puts Axanar Back at Square One

Axanar Productions plans to move to a nearly 6,000 square foot, unimproved warehouse about an hour outside of Atlanta to set up operations after losing the much larger California facility into which it had poured nearly three-quarters of a million dollars of fans’ money without ever using it to produce its film.

After negotiating an early exit from its lease in Valencia, Calif., Axanar CEO Alec Peters prepared to move out of what he called Industry Studios by April 30, 2017.

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According to Peters, the move-in is scheduled for the weekend of May 6-7, and a couple dozen area Axanar supporters have volunteered to help unload the three tractor-trailers worth of sets, office furniture, supplies and undelivered Kickstarter perks.

Volunteers are expected to help reassemble the bridge for Axanar‘s main vessel, the U.S.S. Ares.

The monthly rent is about one-fourth of the nearly $13,000 Peters spent in California. That exorbitant rent, plus the costs of converting the Valencia warehouse into a not-quite-soundproofed soundstage, drained Axanar’s coffers, leading to a last-ditch Indiegogo campaign to try to save it.

That campaign needed to raise $200,000 to put Peters’ Industry Studios on a solid footing. The campaign, with the support of barely 300 of Axanar’s vaunted 15,000 fans, raised about $22,000.

About 10 percent of that money will go to Indiegogo for fees and for the meager perks Axanar offered during the lackluster campaign.

Moving three trailers worth of property across the country would be expected to soak up a significant portion as well, leaving Axanar Productions with not much of a financial foundation for its new facility, and with no announced plans for how it planned to bring in enough revenue to stay afloat.

After raising $1.4 million in crowdfunding, plus at least $300,000 more from other revenue streams, Axanar was broke, as AxaMonitor reported in May 2016. The move to Atlanta puts the company back at square one — with a warehouse Peters hopes to turn into a fan film studio.

That’s despite his telling supporters in a Facebook video the weekend before that the Axanar short film may be the last Star Trek fan film Axanar Productions planned to produce.

With its new base of operations, Peters had said he planned a new fundraising effort — a private one since the settlement of the copyright infringement lawsuit against him prohibits public fundraising, including crowdfunding — to pay for the two-episode, 30-minute version of Axanar.

The script for that effort is not yet complete, according to Axanar spokesman Mike Bawden. Peters cannot create a budget until the script is complete, so the extent of his private fundraising effort is unknown.

Before leaving California, Axanar Productions had reportedly submitted its application to the federal government for federal tax-exempt status as a charitable organization, ostensibly to support other independent and fan filmmakers.

That plan, however, relied on the much bigger Industry Studios facility. It is unknown what challenges the smaller Lawrenceville space, about a half hour drive from Atlanta, will provide in meeting Axanar’s charitable goals.

In the meantime, Peters said in a weekend video posted on Facebook, that he had contacted a film school and producers to seek partnership. Axanar’s Georgia facility, however, is not a soundstage.

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