While Star Trek is doing great on the small screen, its theatrical existence has been paltry of late. And by “of late” I mean that it’s been eight years since Star Trek Beyond, and Paramount has yet to create the long-promised fourth film starring that film’s cast. In 2019, Noah Hawley was going to direct it, but then that version of the film was put on hold.
For a while, WandaVision’s Matt Shakman was set to direct Star Trek 4, but then he jumped ship for Marvel’s Fantastic Four. In 2022, producer J.J. Abrams announced that the fourth film would for sure star the whole main cast from the previous three films, but reportedly the cast had not yet even begun talks with the studio about said film.
(And none of this is even taking into account the time that Quentin Tarantino said he wanted to make a Star Trek, or the scrapped concept for a film in which Chris Pine’s Kirk would somehow re-encounter his dead father, or the other Star Trek film which actually is in the works, which will somehow be an origin story for the whole franchise, maybe.)
But hark, a new screenwriter approacheth! Variety has a big story about the entire Trek universe, and hidden in that story is a new detail about what is apparently being called “the final chapter” for Pine’s crew. Steve Yockey, co-creator of The Flight Attendant and a writer on Supernatural, is now tackling the screenplay.
There are zero plot details, of course. But it might be promising that a new screenwriter is at least on board the Enterprise.
(For The Next Generation fans, Variety has an intriguing detail about Section 31: In the Michelle-Yeoh starring spinoff movie, Kacey Rohl is playing “a young Rachel Garrett.” Make of that what you will!)