I am someone who keeps praying that somehow we’ll get a fourth Star Trek movie in the Kelvin-verse, and Chris Pine’s most recent comments on the subject don’t bode well.
Star Trek Beyond was released in 2016, and while a fourth movie was supposedly on the horizon with Pine returning as Captain Kirk, it lost its writer and director a few times over, and its current standing seems to be up in the air.
Pine is currently doing press for Disney’s Wish, where he plays King Magnifico, and during a press junket interview, he was asked about the status of his fourth Trek movie, and there wasn’t even a glimmer of hope for me in Pine’s response—not even a “stuff is happening” or “we’re talking” to be heard. Just absolute pain from Pine for me as a fan of his take on Captain Kirk.
“Not that I know [of],” Pine told ComicBook.com, and when Jamie Jirak asked asked if he had read a script yet or at least a treatment for one, he responded by saying, “Of course not.” That hurts me physically and emotionally, especially as someone who has offered many times to write it for free. Pine’s response is, sadly, not surprising given the film’s loss of Matt Shakman, as well as the struggles with Pine and Chris Hemsworth’s contracts in the past.
The fact that we hadn’t heard anything about a new screenwriter or director prior to Pine’s comments makes all of this less than shocking, but the thing is: We shouldn’t just forget about the Kelvin-verse as a whole. The series, which started in 2009, still has more stories to tell.
It’s worthwhile to continue this universe
Starting with director J.J. Abrams with the 2009 Star Trek, the series took audiences into an alternate timeline, where events unfolded differently from the Star Trek universe. Labeled as the Kelvin-verse, it gave new life to characters we knew from the original series but with a different origin story. Star Trek Into Darkness and then Star Trek Beyond both had homages to the Star Trek movies of the ’70s and ’80s, but with their own spin on them, and it was my hope that we’d continue to see that trend as the series progressed. Instead, the franchise fell to the wayside when contracts were under dispute, and with the death of Anton Yelchin.
There is success in Star Trek stories on Paramount+, with shows like Strange New Worlds and Picard, so a part of me doesn’t want to give up hope on this franchise quite yet because they could still turn it around and continue the Kelvin-verse stories. The fact that Pine said he hasn’t heard anything might not seem promising, but he’s also used to people asking him about it. Personally, I do hope that Paramount is working on finding another screenwriter and director to tell more stories in this universe, because I think that Pine’s Kirk and Zachary Quinto’s Spock deserve more.
(featured image: Paramount Pictures)
