While the TV side of things just keeps on expanding, the Star Trek movie franchise has stalled ever since 2016’s Beyond. But Paramount has a variety of feature-length projects in the works and is clearly trying to get the Enterprise sailing again in the cinematic medium. Once they manage that, it looks like they want to take a leaf from the book of Warner Bros.’s DC universe.
We’ve heard from our reliable sources – the same ones who told us about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds before it was officially announced – that the studio is looking at doing “small solo movies” for various popular characters from the Trek universe. We’re told that their inspiration for this strategy is WB’s DC franchise. Presumably, this refers to the range of HBO Max films they’ve been announcing all summer, like Batgirl, Blue Beetle and Black Canary.
These smaller-scale films likely wouldn’t be released in theaters and would be made to drop exclusively on streaming, being Paramount Plus’ answer to HBO’s subscription-hoovering DC content. That’s all we’ve been informed at this stage, so there’s no word on which characters the studio could decide are ripe for their own spinoff. It’s possible that individual movie concepts haven’t even been formed yet, just that Paramount knows this is something it wants to do.
If these projects are headed to Paramount Plus, as would make sense, they could be spinoffs from the roster of TV series on the platform, featuring fan-favorite characters from the likes of Discovery, Picard and the upcoming Strange New Worlds. For example, maybe Michelle Yeoh’s long-gestating Section 31 show would work better as a standalone movie?
The current version – and hopefully the one that gets made – of Star Trek 4 has WandaVision‘s Matt Shakman attached to direct, with the studio looking to get Chris Pine and company back on board.
