J. J. Abrams To Produce New 'Star Trek' Movie With 'WandaVision' Director
Star Trek projects for the big screen have hit a bumpy road in recent years, but now it seems that the fourth installment with the original crew (not THAT original crew, of course!) is finally getting ready to rev up the warp drive and boldly go where no man has gone before again. Paramount has confirmed that they have entered into negotiations with Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, John Cho, and Simon Pegg to man the bridge and the engine room of the Starfleet vessel.
The announcement came from J.J. Abrams, who directed and produced Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) and acted as a producer for Star Trek Beyond (2016), during Paramount Investors Day Presentation on February 15:
“We are thrilled to say that we are hard at work on a new ‘Star Trek’ film that will be shooting by the end of the year that will be featuring our original cast and some new characters that I think are going to be really fun and exciting and help take ‘Star Trek’ into areas that you’ve just never seen before. We’re thrilled about this film, we have a bunch of other stories that we’re talking about that we think will be really exciting, so can’t wait for you to see what we’re cooking up. But until then, live long and prosper.”
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Around the time of the release of Star Trek Beyond, Paramount has already announced that they were going to make a fourth movie. Various projects were tossed around but never got as far as an official announcement until now. Long-time fans might remember that the last five years were not the first time that cinematic Star Trek went into a kind of hiatus.
After the dramatic flop of Star Trek Nemesis (2002) with a worldwide performance of only $67 million, Paramount realized that the formula they have used since 1979 of creating a television show and later making a feature film out of it probably would not work anymore. There never was a movie with the crew of the Voyager. The last television series of “the old era” (before Star Trek Discovery), Enterprise, was not well-received enough to even try to bring it to the big screen.
It took until 2009 when J. J. Abrams brought the franchise back to life, not only with a new cast of young actors but also with a completely new timeline (called “Kelvin”). This allowed the characters of the original Star Trek series (Kirk, Spock, Bones, and others) to live their own separate lives and go on their own adventures aside from those of the so-called “Prime” timeline of the series and movies that have come before and that still existed.
Star Trek was a success both critically and financially and was followed four years later by Star Trek Into Darkness, which was basically a remake of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan from 1982. Though still a commercial success, many fans criticized it for the lack of originality. However, things got even worse in 2016 when Star Trek Beyond earned only $159 million domestically, much below the production budget of $185 million.
Still, Paramount was eager to follow up with a fourth movie to be directed by S. J. Clarkson (Jessica Jones). The film planned to reunite James T. Kirk (played by Chris Pine) with his deceased father (played by Chris Hemsworth in the 2009 movie). However, it ultimately fell through as the studio was unable to strike deals with the two Chrises.
Rumors of several other Star Trek projects surfaced in the years after, the most prominent one being an R-rated movie directed by Quentin Tarantino. However, the eccentric director wanted to retire after his tenth feature film and ultimately Star Trek became too big of a project for his final opus.
In late 2019, Paramount contacted Noah Hawley (Fargo) for another Star Trek movie that would have included a new whole cast and new characters. Kalinda Vazquez (Fear the Walking Dead) also wrote a screenplay for a Star Trek feature, but all projects were set on “stand-by” when Emma Watts became president of the Paramount Motion Picture Group in July 2020. Watts’s departure from the company in September 2021 seemingly put an end to the self-proclaimed reevaluation of the future of Star Trek and ultimately make the recent announcement of the new movie possible.
The yet-untitled feature will be produced by Abram’s Bad Robot Productions again and directed by Matt Shakman (WandaVision). Josh Friedman (Avatar 2) and Cameron Squires (WandaVision) will develop the screenplay based on an earlier draft by Lindsey Beer (Sierra Burgess Is A Loser) and Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Captain Marvel).
If all goes well, all major characters from the first three films of the “Kelvin" timeline are said to return, with one sad exception of Pavel Chekov, played by Anton Yelchin who tragically died in an accident shortly before the release of Star Trek Beyond.
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Source(s): Variety