Digital Production Solutions, a division of telecommunications company IDT Media, is trying to get a warp-speed jump into animation by acquiring two stories by late "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry.
DPS has optioned "Starpoint Academy" and "Gene Roddenberry's Char," the only tales the "Star Trek" creator wrote for kids. The plan is to turn them into 3-D animated features or TV shows.
Special find
"Acquiring two stories by Gene Roddenberry is like finding long-lost unpublished manuscripts by Shakespeare or Hemingway in an old trunk or attic," said IDT chairman Howard Jonas.
"Starpoint Academy" is an organization that recruits the best and brightest galactic teens and trains them as elite Astro Rangers on Starpoint Pharos, an artificial planet that's a cosmic United Nations and solves problems around the universe. "Char" is the story of an intergalactic princess robbed of her birthright. Unaware of her true identity, she is raised as a normal girl on 24th-century Earth.
IDT's Morris Berger made the deal with Panacea Entertainment chairman Eric Gardner and Karen Corbin. That duo will exec produce the projects with Majel Roddenberry, Roddenberry's widow.
3-D thrust
The deal furthers Digital Production Solutions' emergence in 3-D feature development and distribution. The projects will be done through IDT's Global Animation Studio's 3-D animation facility.
The Roddenberry pact follows a recent DPS co-production deal with Cartoon Pizza partners Jim Jinkins and David Campbell, creators of "Doug." DPS' studio also produced episodes of "Monster by Mistake" for CCI Entertainment.
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