J.J. Abrams will produce the sequel to Star Trek Beyond, with Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, and John Cho all poised to boldly venture where they have been three times before, according to Paramount. A fourth instalment in the rebooted Star Trek franchise was first mentioned six years ago, but there has been no indication on whether a new Star Trek film will be released until now.
According to Variety, during the Paramount Investors Day Presentation, among the many movie and series announcements, J.J. Abrams himself announced that a sequel to 2016’s Star Trek Beyond would be looking to begin shooting by the end of the year, and that he intends to bring back all of the available cast members from the rebooted series that began in 2009.
“We are thrilled to announce that we are hard at work on a new ‘Star Trek’ film that will be shooting by the end of the year and will feature our original cast as well as some new characters that I think will be really fun and exciting and help take ‘Star Trek’ into areas that you’ve never seen before,” Abrams said. “We’re really excited about this picture, and we’re talking about a number of other tales that we believe will be extremely fascinating, so we can’t wait for you to see what we’re cooking up.” But in the meantime, live long and prosper.”
The untitled film will be produced by Abrams through Bad Robot Productions, with WandaVision’s Matt Shakman taking over directorial duties from Justin Lin, who directed Star Trek Beyond to critical acclaim. This film appears to be attempting to avoid the fate of the original sequel proposal, which was announced and then abandoned in 2018, allegedly due to the studio’s inability to reach an agreement with Chis Pine to reprise his 2009 role as Kirk, or Chris Hemsworth, who was to reprise his 2009 role as Kirk’s father in that particular storey.
Paramount Have Taken Time to Work Out How to Avoid a New Star Trek Movie Being a Flop
According to multiple reports, Paramount has been eager to return to the Star Trek film series, and as one of their biggest IP’s, with multiple spin-off series and movies in the works, it’s not surprising that they want to maximise the return on a third sequel to the 2009 blockbuster return of Captain Kirk and Spock. This time, though, it appears that they will not enter the project without first conducting some preliminary research to determine whether there is still a desire to see Pine, Quinto, and the rest of the crew reconstituted.
Despite positive reviews and a reasonable performance on the surface, Star Trek Beyond ended up losing money for Paramount, so they were not about to jump into another film without making sure that scenario did not reoccur, and it appears that their research has confirmed that fans do want to see the cast return to their roles. The challenge now for Abrams and the production crew will be to bring all of the actors back together.