Paramount has just charted a new course for the Star Trek cinematic universe. The film studio announced a new Star Trek movie that is completely unconnected to any existing Trek films or series. For years, fans have been waiting for the next adventure with Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk and the beloved Enterprise crew, so this unexpected pivot to an entirely new timeline raises a monumental question: Does this fresh start for the franchise mean the long-gestating Star Trek 4 in the Kelvin timeline is finally, officially dead in the water?
Paramount enlists ‘Game Night’ duo for bold new Trek reboot
Paramount is tapping filmmakers Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley to helm the next Star Trek feature film, with the duo expected to write, produce, and even take the director’s chair. Deadline reports that their project will chart an entirely original path for the franchise — one that stands completely apart from every existing Star Trek series, movie, or previously developed film concept. Details remain scarce, and there’s still no timeline for when production might begin or when the film could warp into theaters.
Goldstein and Daley are best known for co-writing and directing Game Night, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, and Vacation, while their writing portfolio includes major titles like Spider-Man: Homecoming, Horrible Bosses, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, along with story credits on The Flash and Horrible Bosses 2.
Is Star Trek 4 officially abandoned?
While Paramount Pictures has yet to make a definitive, formal announcement regarding the fate of the long-promised Star Trek 4 featuring the Kelvin timeline crew, all signs indicate the project is permanently abandoned. This likelihood was seemingly confirmed by David Ellison, the Skydance founder who now owns Paramount, who recently revealed that the next Star Trek movie would not bring back the Chris Pine-led cast.
The Kelvin timeline film series, which successfully rebooted the franchise in 2009 under director J.J. Abrams, struggled to maintain warp speed after the commercially underwhelming performance of 2016’s Star Trek Beyond, leading the series to essentially fizzle out.
Over the ensuing years, the studio was trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of development hell, attempting to launch various high-profile incarnations of a fourth film. At one point, there were reportedly three different scripts in the works at the same time. These highly ambitious concepts ranged from an R-rated, Quentin Tarantino-scripted film to one that would have brought back Chris Hemsworth as Captain James T. Kirk’s father, which was dubbed “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in space.” A Simon Kinberg-produced prequel was also briefly explored. This relentless cycle of false starts even prompted the franchise’s captain, Pine, to vent in 2023 that a fourth Star Trek film for his crew felt cursed.
The cold, hard truth behind the decade-long struggle was perhaps best articulated by Simon Pegg in 2020, who laid bare the core financial challenge of making a massive-budget sequel. “Star Trek movies don’t make Marvel money. … They make maybe $500 [million] at the most, and to make one now, on the scale they’ve set themselves, is $200 [million]. You have to make three times that to make a profit,” said the actor who played Montgomery “Scotty” Scott in the Kelvin timeline Star Trek films.
The new Star Trek movie with Goldstein and Daley at the helm is still in development, which means anything could happen. It might move forward as planned, take a different direction, or potentially not come to fruition at all. Only time will tell — so fingers crossed for all the Trekkies out there!