The film we’ll call Star Trek 4 has a new screenwriter, but it seems that nobody at Paramount told Chris Pine. “I thought there was already a script,” he said.
One of the fascinating elements in Paramount’s near decade-long attempt to make a sequel to Star Trek Beyond is Chris Pine’s response to the meandering saga.
Last November, when asked about the status of what we’ll call Star Trek 4 for now, the Captain Kirk actor simply said, “I don’t know anything. In Star Trek land, the actors are usually the last people to find out anything. I know costume designers that have read scripts before the actors.”
A few months later – in March 2024, to be more precise – it was announced that Paramount and Bad Robot had embarked on a new attempt to make a sequel to 2016’s Star Trek: Beyond. The film would bring back the previous three films’ cast, including Pine, Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban, and would be written by screenwriter Steve Yockey, previously of TV’s The Flight Attendant fame.
Continuing an established narrative, though, it seems that nobody at Paramount bothered to tell Pine. As far as he was concerned, there was already a script written and ready to go.
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“I honestly don’t know,” Pine said when Business Insider asked whether he’d play Kirk again. “There was something in the news of a new writer coming on board. I thought there was already a script, but I guess I was wrong, or they decided to pivot. As it’s always been with Trek – I just wait and see.”
Wind back the clock to March 2022, and Pine expressed similar obliviousness over news that a new Star Trek film was set to film that year (which, of course, never happened).
“I think everybody was like, ‘did you hear about this’”, he laughed. “We’re usually the last people to find out, but I do know we’re all excited. Whenever they want to send us a script, we’re ready for it.”
Time will tell whether this latest in an eight-year attempt to make a Star Trek Beyond sequel going will finally gain traction. Meanwhile, can someone from Paramount maybe give Chris Pine a call with an update or two? Poor chap.
More as we get it.
