The rebooted Star Trek trilogy was far from a financial disappointment, but the numbers pulled in by the Kelvin timeline were still relatively middling compared to the heights hit by the biggest summer blockbusters to roll out on an annual basis.
J.J. Abrams’ opener, sequel Into Darkness and Justin Lin’s Beyond combined to haul in almost $1.2 billion globally, but the $525 million spent in production costs meant that the profit margins were far from spectacular once the marketing, distribution and promotional costs had been subtracted.
Star Trek 4 has remained in a state of limbo for half a decade, but things could finally be looking up for Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and the rest of the gang. WandaVision‘s Matt Shakman was recently hired to direct a new sci-fi epic with a release date already locked in for June 2023, and the early talk is that he’s aiming to reunite the Kelvin cast for their fourth canonical outing.
While any deals haven’t been made public as of yet, we’re hearing from our sources – the same ones who told us Discovery‘s Captain Pike was getting his own spinoff series long before Strange New Worlds was announced – that Paramount are hoping to tie down the principal players for an entire trilogy.
That doesn’t mean they’ll get them, though, especially when Pine has already walked away from Star Trek 4 once before, and looking at how long the project has lingered in development and the various other pitches to have been thrown the studio’s way in the interim, a full trio of brand new big budget adventures seems a little ambitious at such an early stage, so we’ll keep an eye on this one and see if anything comes of it.
