Brent Spiner Nearly Walked Away From the $118M Star Trek Epic Unless Paramount Met Two Nonnegotiable Demands

Brent Spiner did not stumble into Star Trek: Generations. He marched in with leverage and a plan. On Michael Rosenbaum's 'Inside of You' podcast, the man behind Data broke down the deal he made with Paramount before jumping into the first TNG feature. It was bold, oddly specific, and — by his telling — something nobody else had pulled off back then.

The ask: money, and a totally separate movie

'I said, look, I am not doing it unless I make x amount of money, and more importantly, I get another role. I only did that once — there has to be something that is not Star Trek that Paramount Pictures is doing right now.'

Translation: pay me, and also put me in a non-Trek Paramount movie. Not a cameo, not a promise — a real part. If they could not make that happen, there was a penalty baked in.

The clause that made Paramount pay up

'There was a clause in it that if they did not find another movie for me to do, they had to pay me off some nice figure.'

So either Paramount cast him in a non-Star Trek film, or they cut him a check. And according to Spiner, they did not find the time to plug him into another Paramount project while the TNG movies were rolling — so he got paid. A savvy little piece of contract judo, considering how central Data was and how much Paramount needed him onboard for Generations to land.

About that Independence Day thing...

Spiner says he had already lined up a role in Independence Day while the Generations deal was still being finalized. Quick correction corner: he did not play Captain Steven Hiller in Independence Day — that was Will Smith. Spiner played Dr. Brackish Okun, the Area 51 scientist with a hair-raising lab situation. Also worth noting: Independence Day was a Fox movie, not Paramount, which is exactly why the Paramount clause still triggered. The clause was about Paramount putting him in a separate, non-Trek Paramount film. They did not, so he collected.

Why this deal raised eyebrows

Spiner frames it as a first-of-its-kind (maybe only-of-its-kind) early-90s actor-studio agreement — a targeted 'cast me in something else or pay me' rider tied to a major franchise film. Whether literally the only one or just extremely rare, it is the kind of contract wrinkle you almost never hear about, and it clearly worked to his advantage.

What came next for Spiner and Trek

Generations (1994) kicked off a full run of TNG-cast features — First Contact (1996), Insurrection (1998), and Nemesis (2002). Spiner stayed central to all of it, and his bargaining power from that first movie seems to have put him in a strong position for the years that followed.

The receipts: Spiner's Star Trek run

• Star Trek: The Next Generation (TV, 1987–1994) — Lt. Cmdr. Data / Lore / Dr. Noonien Soong
• Star Trek: Generations (Film, 1994) — Lt. Cmdr. Data
• Star Trek: First Contact (Film, 1996) — Lt. Cmdr. Data
• Star Trek: Insurrection (Film, 1998) — Lt. Cmdr. Data
• Star Trek: Nemesis (Film, 2002) — Lt. Cmdr. Data / B-4
• Star Trek: Enterprise (TV, 2004–2005) — Arik Soong
• Star Trek: Picard (TV, 2020–2023) — Data / Altan Inigo Soong / Adam Soong (and more)
• Star Trek: Lower Decks (TV, 2021 guest) — Data (voice)

Where to watch

Star Trek: Generations is streaming on Paramount+ in the U.S.