For well over 50 years, Star Trek has continued to reinvent itself for modern audiences, with the fanbase continually growing. An entire generation who were only introduced to the property by Discovery will almost inevitably dive into the back catalogue, while those who grew up watching The Original Series, The Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine or Enterprise are still heavily invested in the sci-fi franchise.
Animation, meanwhile, has been a relatively recent expansion of the brand thanks to Lower Decks, which is the first major animated Star Trek project since the 1973 show that ran for two seasons and featured the voices of the original cast. Of course, Nickelodeon are also preparing to debut the kid-friendly Prodigy later this year, while the second season of the aforementioned Lower Decks is currently in production.
Not only that, but insider Daniel Richtman is now claiming that a feature-length animation is in the works as well, but besides offering that it appears most likely to be a Paramount+ exclusive, he divulges no additional information. Of course, in the last few weeks alone the tipster has reported that multiple new movies are in development, including a few R-rated efforts, while a further three small screen spinoffs are also said to be coming down the pipeline in addition to the six that are either already with us or will be soon, but as of yet, none of them have been confirmed.
Paramount couldn’t even get any of the four live-action films they had in development into production before the entire big screen arm of Star Trek was ground to a screeching halt by a lack of any sort of forward momentum, so quite why they would want to forge ahead with the altogether more time consuming process of crafting a big budget animation is anyone’s guess. But then again, Richtman has a strong track record when it comes to inside scoops and as of now, there’s no real reason to doubt his latest piece of intel.
