Paramount confirms that another Star Trek movie in the Kelvin timeline is on the way, although those perilous cast negotiations are ‘underway’.
The big news to emerge out of Paramount’s posh investor presentation that it undertook yesterday was that it looks like we’ll be getting a fourth Star Trek film in the Kelvin timeline, a prospect which has seemed increasingly unlikely over the past few years.
Paramount has announced that the film will be directed WandaVision's Matt Shakman, with J.J. Abrams producing. The script has been written by Josh Friedman and Cameron Squires who penned TV’s Snowpiercer and WandaVision respectively. That sounds like quite the creative team right there, with Shakman’s unbridled creativity bolstered by two formidable writers, not to mention the guiding hand of Abrams who knows a thing or two about getting a Star Trek movie made.
However, before you celebrate by breaking out the tribbles, Dark Horizons is reporting that casting negotiations are still ‘underway’, meaning that Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg and company aren’t yet locked into the project. It’s worth a mention because we’ve been here before with Star Trek 4,with an earlier attempt to set the sequel up fell apart. Pine, along with Chris Hemsworth (who was set to reprise his role as George Kirk) walked away when their salary demands weren’t met. We’d hope that negotiations are at the very final stages as Paramount certainly wouldn’t want to face the ridicule of publicly losing its principal cast members for the second time.
Subsequent attempts to set up other Star Trek projects have stalled, including the infamous Quentin Tarantino film, but ultimately, there’ll be a lot of fans pleased that Paramount have opted to return to the Kelvin timeline. Whilst Into Darkness and Beyond have both fans and detractors, the series clearly contains bags of potential having assembled a brilliant cast whom they can hopefully lure back for another film (or three).
Production is targeted to begin later this year, although Paramount elected not to put out a new release date. You can be sure that we’ll let you know as we hear more.
—
Thank you for visiting! If you’d like to support our attempts to make a non-clickbaity movie website:
Follow Film Stories on Twitter here, and on Facebook here.
Buy our Film Stories and Film Stories Junior print magazines here.
Become a Patron here.
