Fans of the rebooted science fiction movie series for Star Trek might want to cover their ears now, as we have a disappointing update about the potential for a Star Trek 4.
Despite Paramount promising in June that Star Trek 4 was close to production, it looks like the USS Enterprise has instead crash-landed into development hell. According to Variety, Paramount has removed the previously-announced Star Trek movie from its upcoming release slate.
All the main players from the adventure movie series, which was set for a December 2o23 release date, were expected to return, including Chris Pine (Captain Kirk), Zachary Quinto (Spock), Zoe Saldana (Uhura), Karl Urban (Bones), John Cho (Sulu), and Simon Pegg (Scotty). However, the fate of the film, which was meant to be produced by J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, was called into doubt after director Matt Shakman exited the film last month, seemingly seduced by Marvel into directing the Fantastic Four MCU reboot instead.
But maybe not all hope is lost. Just last month, Chris Pine, who recently starred in Don’t Worry Darling, said in an interview on the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast that he would definitely be down to continue playing Star Trek captain James T. Kirk in the future.
“It’s super cool. I love the idea,” he said. “It’s very rare to get a chance to play one character over the entire essentially course of your career. If I had the chance to do that, I think it would be so cool. So, so cool. So hopefully we get to do it.”
But who needs movies, anyway? If you want to turn your attention to the small screen, check out our guide to every Star Trek series ranked.