We now have some concrete info about the much anticipated new Star Trek series focusing on Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard, the first time he’ll have played the Enterprise-D captain since 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis. The Trek fandom exploded when it was revealed that the beloved character was making a return back in August and now, we know when the show’s set to go before the cameras.
Trek Movie caught up with executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Heather Kadin after the Star Trek: Discovery panel at last month’s New York Comic-Con and got it out of them that the Picard series is expected to begin production in April 2019. They couldn’t say when the show will arrive on CBS All Access, but Trek Movie offered an educated guess about that. Based on the timeframe of Discovery‘s production, they estimate that it could be with us in early 2020.
Stewart previously announced that the show was entering pre-production the other month when he shared a photo of himself with the crew, captioning it: “The journey begins.” Likewise, Kurtzman confirmed at the NYCC panel that the writers room was “four weeks in” to the process of scripting the series.
It was also confirmed last month that the plan isn’t to make the Picard revival as a one-off limited show but a new ongoing drama much in the same vein as Discovery. Kadin reiterated this to Trek Movie, too, maintaining that they’re hoping to produce multiple seasons with Stewart in the lead.
As for the plot and what it’ll entail, we’re still none the wiser. In his speech to the crowd at Star Trek Las Vegas that announced his return to the franchise, though, Stewart teased that all bets are off when it comes to where Picard will be in his life on the show. “He may not be a captain anymore,” the actor said. “He may not be the Jean-Luc that you recognize and know so well. It may be a very different individual.”
In the meantime, we have Discovery season 2 to satisfy our Star Trek fix when it lands on CBS All Access in January 2019.
