The Star Trek film franchise is preparing for a huge comeback.
On Monday, at the UBS Global Technology, Media & Telecommunications Conference in New York in his first investor conference appearance since the Viacom and CBS merger, ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish confirmed that there are currently two Star Trek movies in the works. While Bakish didn’t specifically say which these movies are, these are likely the fourth Kelvin Timeline Star Trek movie helmed and written by Noah Hawley, and the R-Rated Star Trek film being developed by Quentin Tarantino.
While plot details about Hawley’s Star Trek movie are being kept under wraps, the sequel is expected to reunite the original cast members of the Kelvin timeline, which includes Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, and Karl Urban.
The original Star Trek 4 movie was supposed to be directed S.J. Clarkson with Chris Hemsworth set to reprise his role as George Kirk. Unfortunately, the project was sidelined by contractual disputes, including that of Hemsworth’s. Now, there’s no word yet on whether Hemsworth will still return as Capt. James T. Kirk’s (Pine) father in the re-developed movie or if the original time-travel plot for the film that involves the character has been scrapped altogether.
As for the Star Trek movie that Tarantino pitched to J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions in 2017, the last update was that the project was awaiting Tarantino’s notes on the finished draft of the screenplay penned by The Revenant writer Mark Smith. But in an episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast last July, Tarantino revealed that the movie is also set in the Kelvin timeline, before admitting that he wasn’t totally happy with how the movie was shaping up.
“I don’t know how much I can say. The one thing I can say is it would deal with the Chris Pine timeline,” Tarantino said at the time. “Now, I still don’t quite understand, and JJ [Abrams] can’t explain it to me, and my editor has tried to explain it to me and I still don’t get it…about something happened in the first movie that now kind of wiped the slate clean. I don’t buy that. I don’t like it. I don’t appreciate it. I don’t — f*** that… I want the whole series to have happened, it just hasn’t happened yet.”