CBS’ Star Trek: Discovery Will Be Another Show To Blur The Line Between Film And Television, According To Alex Kurtzman

You’ve heard of it, haven’t you? The Golden Age of television? The actual term can be traced back to the early ’50s, when the small screen was teeming with hour-long anthology dramas. By the 2000s, the Golden Age took on a new form to encompass such top-tier series like Mad Men, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad and, more recently, HBO’s ongoing Game of Thrones.

The latter is fast approaching its penultimate season on the airwaves – July 16th is the date for your diaries – and Alex Kurtzman, director and producer of The Mummy, considers Game of Thrones to be a shining example of a property that helps blur the line between film and television. From the sprawling drama to Thrones‘ industry-standard production values, it’s difficult to argue against Kurtzman’s point, and while doing the press rounds for Universal’s eerie reboot/franchise-starter, the filmmaker touched base on Star Trek: Discovery, a project on which he holds a producing credit, to discuss why CBS’ long-anticipated reboot is also poised to push the envelope storytelling wise.

Per Collider:

Look, here’s the other thing that’s happening, and you know this to be true. The line between film and television is utterly blurred. Not just at a storytelling level, but visually now. What we’re doing on Star Trek right now, that’s not that different from what we’re doing in the movies. I think that’s what people expect when they pay for Netflix, or for HBO, or whatever they’re going to pay for. That actually makes…as a storyteller, it makes it, in the many ways, you’re not limited by ‘oh, we could never really do that on television scope wise’ because now, take a look at Game of Thrones. That’s a movie.

Once slated for a January premiere, Discovery has since been pushed back to a late 2017 premiere on CBS. It’s a tale that grew in the telling, then – quite literally, after the network bumped the episode count to 15 – and after 12 years without a small-screen Star Trek TV series, it’s small wonder why there’s a hushed excitement surrounding the impending reboot.

Headed up by First Officer Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), Captain Lorca (Jason Isaacs), Spock’s father, Sarek (James Frain), Lt. Saru (Doug Jones), and Lt. Stamets (Anthony Rapp), Sonequa Martin-Green’s Number One will spearhead Star Trek: Discovery into the dark recesses of space later in 2017.