Following the passing of Leonard Nimoy, fans were hoping that William Shatner would occupy the legacy role occupied by his former co-star in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek franchise. The idea of alternate timelines was largely dropped for Justin Lin’s Beyond, though, before the planned fourth installment found itself mired in development hell, and it’s still yet to escape.
There are now two Star Trek movies in active development, both of which are being produced by Abrams and Bad Robot, but only one of them has been given a release date. There’s first is being written by Discovery scribe Kalinda Vasquez, and a mystery second project is penciled in to hit theaters in the summer of 2023.
Based on what we know so far, neither of those films are expected to reunite the Enterprise crew from the Kelvin series, despite the stars of the most recent trilogy repeatedly outlining their desires to return. However, a new rumor claims that Paramount are planning on uniting multiple versions of Captain Kirk in a future film, but the details don’t stretch much farther than that.
In fact, the report doesn’t detail whether this is intended to happen in either of the two in-development titles, or even if Shatner or Pine are under consideration to reprise their respective roles as the iconic Starfleet captain, so at best we’ve got a vague statement that could mean any number of things and unfold in countless potential permutations in virtually any scenario across the entire Star Trek lineup.
What we do know is that the streaming roster is set to expand massively thanks to the advent of Paramount+, but for now at least, it’s best not to read too much into the notion of countless Kirks until we find out more details.
