You’d have thought that the announcement of a new Star Trek feature film would help clear up some of the uncertainty that’s been plaguing the big screen arm of the franchise ever since Justin Lin’s Beyond was released five years ago, but if anything, it’s only raised more questions.
J.J. Abrams will produce through his Bad Robot banner, but the new project wasn’t confirmed as the next installment in the Kelvin timeline. In fact, the canonical Star Trek 4 hasn’t even been officially canceled by Paramount as of yet despite being on hold for so long, so it stands to reason that this new movie will exist independently from the world inhabited by Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg and the gang.
Furthermore, Discovery scribe Kalinda Vazquez will be writing the script, leading to speculation that it could be a spinoff to the popular show, and with the news that Paramount+ is already laying out plans for the future of the Enterprise crew on the small screen, there’s been talk that Abrams’ mystery movie might be developed as a streaming exclusive, as the upstart platform positions the beloved sci-fi property as one of its major selling points.
What form it’ll ultimately take remains to be seen, but insider Daniel Richtman is claiming that future Star Trek projects, although he doesn’t specify whether it’d be movies or TV shows, will have a much heavier horror influence than ever before. While this should be taken with a pinch of salt for now, with the tipster regularly touting potential new directions for the franchise over the last several months, it certainly sounds like a terrible idea should it end up happening.
The overwhelming majority of longtime Star Trek fans would more than likely have no interest whatsoever in seeing the brand veer into full-blown horror territory, and the last thing they want is Paramount throwing everything at the wall to see what ends up sticking.
Published: Mar 6, 2021 10:29 am