Star Trek is boldly going back to the big screen, and this time WandaVision director Matt Shakman is in the director’s chair. Deadline reports that Paramount and J.J. Abrams’s production company Bad Robot are expediting pre-production so the science fiction movie can start filming next Spring.
Shakman will be working from a script from Lindsey Beer and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, but no plot details are known yet. In fact, we don’t even know who’ll be crewing the Enterprise this time around, it could be Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and the rest of the Kelvin timeline crew, but equally, it may be a whole new team.
We haven’t had a Star Trek movie since the release of Justin Lin’s Star Trek Beyond in 2016. Beyond received positive reviews from fans and critics, who praised the film for honouring the original series science fiction roots, but it failed to make a splash at the box office. According to Deadline, the film ended up losing an estimated $50 million, and consequently, Paramount was forced to rethink its Star Trek plans.
Quentin Tarantino was the man they turned to, and he announced in 2017 he’d pitched an idea to Paramount for a new Star Trek movie. Unfortunately, while Paramount were keen for Tarantino to bring his unique style of filmmaking to the franchise, the project failed to take off, and in 2019 the esteemed director said the film was no longer in development.
Further plans to continue the adventures of Pine’s crew were also scrapped after Pine and Chris Hemsworth – who was set to reprise his role as Kirk’s father – allegedly walked out of contract negotiations over a pay dispute.
Deadline then reported that Fargo’s Noah Hawley was in talks to develop a new fourth film for Pine and the crew. Whatever he had planned never came together, though as Paramount put the movie on indefinite hold.
Let’s hope that the next instalment in the franchise has more luck than the last few attempts at bringing Star Trek back. Thankfully if Shakman’s work on WandaVision for the Marvel Cinematic Universe is anything to go by we should be just fine.
If you prefer magic and sorcery to reason and logic, check out our list of the best fantasy movies.