CBS’s Star Trek TV franchise is humming right along at Warp Speed: its animated series Lower Decks premiered yesterday, and after that season wraps up, the third season of Discovery will take over on CBS All Access.
But while the TV franchise is bustling, the film franchise remains in limbo. According to Deadline, Paramount has put Noah Hawley’s Star Trek 4 on “pause” while it works to figure out what to do with the franchise next.
The last Star Trek film to hit theaters, Star Trek Beyond, did so in 2016, and ever since, there’s been a handful of attempts to produce another one in the continuity that J.J. Abrams started back in 2009 with Star Trek.
The most recent attempt was to be helmed by Hawley, the writer behind FX’s Legion. That project surfaced in November 2019, and it was apparently going to be set within the Kelvin timeline (J.J. Abrams was set to produce), but earlier this year, Hawley hinted that he was most interested in bringing in new characters and stories:
“I’m excited there’s going to be another Matrix movie. I don’t need it to be the old Matrix movie. I’m excited to see characters used in new ways, or new characters, or whatever it is.”
Deadline says that Hawley’s film would have featured a new cast and would have been about a “deadly virus.”
Now, it looks like Paramount is doing some reevaluating. In July, Paramount brought in Emma Watts (formerly of 20th Century Fox) to head up its movie division, and in this latest report, Deadline says that her top priority will be to rebuild the science fiction franchise. Thus, Hawley’s take seems to have been put in a holding pattern while that happens.
Taking the time to figure it out might work well in Paramount’s favor, especially in a theatrical environment where overarching franchises are par for the course. There have been a handful of attempts at a new film: a sequel to Beyond seemed inevitable, but the death of Anton Yelchin and other factors seem to have blunted the enthusiasm for it — stars Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pine walking away over pay might have contributed as well . Paramount announced in 2018 that S. J. Clarkson would direct a new film, but she departed the project a year later to direct a prequel to Game of Thrones for HBO (which also didn’t happen — she’s now reportedly working on a Spider-man related film for Sony). in 2017, Quentin Tarantino had been working on a Star Trek film, but said last year that he was “steering away” from that.
Deadline notes that both Hawley and Tarantino’s projects aren’t dead, but suggests that they might serve as one-off projects that would be attempted down the road, rather than holding up an entire new series. The decision over their fates, Deadline says, will happen in the next couple of weeks. If they don’t survive, presumably Paramount will go back to the drawing board to figure out what new worlds the franchise will visit next — something the TV franchise has already been doing.
It’s understandable to scrap the movie that had a storyline about a deadly virus after 2020 happened. But still would be interested in a Hawley movie, his Legion work was very intneresting in a lot of stylistic ways.
A virus story is hard to pull off anyhow. Sure, you can occasionally get a gripping one like with the movie Contagion, but Star Trek’s takes on the subject, at least on the TV side, haven’t been the strongest — Sulu swinging a sword notwithstanding.
Just keep Tarantino’s hands off the property. He has nothing to offer but violence porn.
Totally understandable
If it brings an end to Abrams, I’m for it. Turning Star Trek into Star Wars Lite was a bad idea.
Well, that’s too bad. I do like the idea of one-off Star Trek films that are completely independent from one another, like an anthology series. They could bring in a brand new A-list cast and director each-time to drum up mass audience interest and it’ll keep the Trek movie format from growing stale. But ideally they’d be set in the Prime timeline.
I keep wondering what Star Trek movies are even for now. Star Wars and comic book movies have a lock on the space action-adventure market. And even when they could make the odd good Star Trek movie (or even numbered if you prefer), it was never a completely comfortable fit for the brainy, optimistic, cosmo-nautical spirit of Roddenberry’s creation. The increasing frenetic, violent, and bombastic scale of blockbuster cinema over the past 40 years has only emphasized that disconnect more and more.
Can’t say I’ll be missing more of them, to be honest. Now if someone could just convince the powers-that-be to calm down and stop making the new Star Trek series like blockbuster movies, too.
Seems like the obvious answer to “how do we continue the Kelvin timeline without the OG cast” would be “let’s do The Next Generation in the Kelvin timeline – how do things look 100 years later?”
But what do I know? I’m just a fan…
I liked the 2009 film well enough, but only saw it once and apparently was happy to leave things there. I’ve found it difficult to get excited about the Kelvin timeline after so much investment in things that happened much later in the Prime. I basically treat them like the novels (optional add-ons).
When I go to sleep at night, I kneel beside my bed and say a prayer to my patron demon-god that Quentin Tarantino will make his R-rated Star Trek movie. I promise an extra blood sacrifice if Patrick Stewart is in it.
@5/pjcamp: It was never about Abrams. Paramount has been trying to make Star Trek movies duplicate the Star Wars action-blockbuster approach since 1982. Almost all Trek movies have been superficial and spectacle-driven compared to the TV franchise, just as modern action movies in general are superficial next to TV writing. (Even in Star Wars itself — series like The Clone Wars and Rebels were able to delve deeper into worldbuilding and character development than the movies could, just by the nature of the formats and the relative amount of time they have available.) The new Trek films would have been in that vein no matter who was brought in to direct them. So wanting to make your criticisms of movies personal, to blame a specific individual for them, is misguided. It’s much larger than that.
If anything, I prefer Abrams to a lot of other modern directors, because he can do a blockbuster action film that’s still grounded in character and emotion, rather than losing the characters amid the spectacle and destruction.
I’d like to see a Next Generation version of the Kelvin timeline. Who would play Picard? Strange New Worlds is still happening, as well (but apparently without Kirk).
@15, I’d be happy if they got James McAvoy
Abrams needs to move on. He’s already destroyed two franchises.
@3: Considering that Nu!Trek has featured a decapitated baby head, Hugh getting disassembled on-screen, and faces getting torn to shreds during the Admonition, I can hardly see how Tarantino could be worse. If anything, I’d prefer his take on things over Kurtzman, A) because the violence would actually mean something more than just shock value, B) there’d be his trademark great use of tension, and C) we’d actually get some well-written dialogue for once, as opposed to Burnham’s endless naval-gazing and Raffi’s sub-Tumblr level lecturing.
@14: If by “grounded in character and emotion”, you mean “extreme amounts of lens flare”, then yes, Abrams is the right director for the job. Seriously, you seem to be confusing him for Christopher Nolan or the Wachowskis; he’s not a good storyteller in the slightest, and his films are frequently are only as good as their scripts.
@18/Devin Smith: The fact that I see merits in Abrams’s work that you do not does not entitle you to insult my intelligence or perception. I meant exactly what I said and I stand by it.
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I assume we have completely broken with any philosophical debt to Roddenbery if Tarentino was even considered? #3 is right. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is BRILLIANT if you have the discipline to leave 15 minutes before the end of the movie.
@23/bill: “I assume we have completely broken with any philosophical debt to Roddenbery if Tarentino was even considered?”
I don’t think we can assume that, since creators are capable of working in more than one mode. Look at other cases where established filmmakers have been brought onto franchise films, e.g. Kenneth Branagh or James Gunn in the MCU. They’re expected to temper their own approaches and produce something consistent with the tone and values of the franchise, and if they’re unable to do that, they get replaced, like Edgar Wright with Ant-Man.
I mean, look at Lower Decks. Its showrunner is a producer on Rick & Morty, which I gather is very cynical and nihilistic, but since LD is a Trek show, it tries to be true to Trek’s basic values and is more upbeat. Creators can modulate their approach, telling different kinds of story in different contexts.
Good. Now Hawley can put his attention back into that CAT’S CRADLE adaptation he’s been promising the past few years…
@24 I completely agree that is how it should be. I simply have no belief that Tarantino could, in fact, do that. The violence he uses is never necessary to tell the story and is, to my eyes, only there for shock and awe factor because he’s incapable of telling a story that isn’t cribbed from elsewhere (Reservoir Dogs vs City on Fire).
I remember reading the original Ellison script for “City on the Edge of Forever”. Very interesting and very dark story but it was not Star Trek. Any story Tarantino tried to tell would be like that without any of Roddenbery’s rewrites.
@26/wlewisii: I’m not familiar enough with Tarantino’s work to judge, but I still say a franchise director would probably never be given absolute free rein. (Oh, good grief, I almost slipped and wrote “free reign.” I see that mistake so often I’m forgetting the right spelling.) Either he would learn to restrain his idiosyncrasies or the studio would have someone else take over as director. Paramount might value the name recognition he would bring, but Star Trek is one of their most important ongoing franchises and I doubt they’d be comfortable letting anyone drag it too far in a different, less mainstream direction.
For what it’s worth, Tarantino has directed a couple of TV episodes, including a CSI installment which I’ve seen. I don’t remember much about it, but I don’t think it diverged too far from the show’s usual style.