The Kelvin timeline of Star Trek might have comfortably brought in the biggest box office returns in the long and illustrious history of the beloved sci-fi franchise, but the films were hardly doing gangbusters in comparison to the rest of Hollywood’s highest profile output. All three of them scored largely positive reviews from critics, with the average Rotten Tomatoes score of the trilogy working out to an impressive 88%, but there always seemed to be a missing ingredient holding them back from attaining a certain level of commercial success.
They all made money, but Beyond‘s $343 million haul in particular is a pretty weak number for the third installment in a sci-fi series that comes with a built-in audience and two well-received predecessors, so it’s little wonder that Paramount decided to hit the pause button. Even before Star Trek 4 was put on hold, though, it had already faced plenty of behind the scenes turmoil.
The initial plans were for Chris Hemsworth to reprise his brief role as George Kirk from the first rebooted film, but both he and onscreen son Chris Pine ended up walking away from the project entirely due to creative and contractual disagreements. Simon Pegg, meanwhile, co-wrote Beyond and even he said that he doesn’t know what the future held for the Enterprise crew, but a new report is now claiming that the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Thor is back on board.
The story also comes burdened with a ton of additional information that includes a new director replacing S.J. Clarkson, a potential exclusive streaming release on Paramount+, the return of William Shatner and plans to make it the darkest Star Trek movie ever. That’s a lot of variables in play for a film that’s still technically on ice, so we’ll just need to wait and see how it unfolds over the coming months.