The Star Trek franchise looks set to continue on the big screen, although nobody seems entirely sure how. Legion showrunner Noah Hawley was hired to write and direct a new entry in the sci-fi series, which was widely expected to be the canonical Star Trek 4, but based on his repeated comments, it sounds as though he might be planning to reboot the Enterprise crew once again.
Meanwhile, Simon Pegg admitted that he isn’t sure what the future holds for the Kelvin timeline even though he co-wrote the last instalment, and after all of the back and forth surrounding Chris Pine’s contractual status, the whole issue could be rendered pointless if Hawley simply decides to wipe the slate clean.
While there’s a lot of confusion surrounding the cinematic side of the franchise, on the small screen, Star Trek continues to remain hugely popular. Patrick Stewart’s return in Picard was a hit with fans and had second and third seasons ordered before the first had even been released, while Discovery has been spun off into the short film series Short Treks, with companion shows Section 31 and Strange New Worlds also in the works.
There’s more Star Trek content coming down the pipeline than ever before, then, and we’ve now heard from our sources – the same ones that told us the Discovery spinoff focusing on Captain Pike was in development well before it was officially announced – that Paramount are keen on the idea of folding several projects into the same continuity to establish a Star Trek Cinematic Universe.
According to our intel, the studio want the Kelvin cast to return but are also working on films that will feature a different crew, and they believe the shared universe approach would give them the best of both worlds. Not only would it maximize their earning potential, but the very nature of sci-fi itself creates easy storytelling opportunities to blend it all together. Exact details as to what exactly they’ve got planned remain unclear, but again, we’re told that there will soon be various films with different crews and the idea right now, at least, is to build an entire cinematic universe to house them all.
