Fourth Star Trek film with Kelvin cast gets new screenwriter – Trek Brasilis

The franchise is returning to feature film production with Section 31the first television film produced in the history of Star Trek. But what about the big screen? The special report from Variety published this Wednesday (27) brings some clues and news – but it is necessary to take them with a pinch of salt.

Paramount Pictures remains committed to its partnership with Bad Robot to produce theatrical motion pictures Star Trekand one of the projects in development is what is described as the “final chapter” of the alternate universe saga that began in 2009, with Star Trek, by JJ Abrams. Newly, there is the announcement of a screenwriter for the job: Steve Yockey is currently preparing a new version of the script.

The problem is that an attempt to make this fourth film has been going on since 2016, when the last one was released (Star Trek Without Borders). Originally, it would have had Chris Hemsworth return as George Kirk, in a reunion with his son James. Things fell apart in 2018, with the collapse of fee negotiations.

Around the same time, Quentin Tarantino flirted with the idea of ​​directing a Star Trek, with no chronological connection to Abrams’ productions, but the idea soon evaporated as well. Noah Hawley was then hired to develop a feature-length project and was well into pre-production when a change in management at the studio pulled the plug and canceled the initiative in 2020.

In 2021, it was announced that screenwriter Kalinda Vasquez was developing a feature film Star Trek no connection to previous projects. But since then nothing has been heard of it.

In 2022, JJAbrams appeared at a Paramount shareholder meeting to announce the return of the 2009 cast in a new film, to be directed by Matt Shakman. Detail: none of the actors then had a contract for the project, and Shakman ended up giving it up to direct the Fantastic Four film for Marvel.

After that, we were left with no real news — until now, with the announcement of Steve Yockey’s arrival on the project. Does that mean you’re going to walk? We do not know. There’s a long way to go between writing a script and filming it, measured in many millions of dollars — perhaps more than the studio can afford, with the stellar cast of Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Zoe Saldaña.

What no one doubts is that, at some point, there will be a new cinema film from Star Trek. And at the moment Paramount Pictures is betting on the development of several parallel projects. In addition to the coveted fourth chapter of the Kelvin timeline, there is an idea that is further along, defined by Variety as “kind of an origin story for the main timeline of the entire franchise.” What does that mean? We do not know. What we do know is that the film is written by Seth Grahame-Smith (of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) and directed by Toby Haynes (who has directed episodes of Andor and the famous spoof in Star Trek in Black Mirror, “USS Callister”). This project is said to be on track to begin pre-production at the end of the year.

In both cases, according to sources from Varietythe studio is trying to contain the budget so that it is compatible with the box office potential of a film Star Trekwhich does not reach the half-billion dollar mark.

On the television side, things are moving more fluidly. Without saying numbers, Alex Kurtzman says that Section 31 cost “much less than what a movie would cost Star Trek“. It’s a reminder that the franchise has always done better by banking on its fan base and lower costs — theatrical films only took off when production (and scope) passed to Paramount’s TV division, with the still-celebrated Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Kurtzman, by the way, remains firm with plans for more television films Star Trek in addition to Section 31. Michelle Yeoh says she would be willing to come back for more, and the producer says one possibility is to develop a spin-off film Picard.

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