When Paramount finally announced that they were in fact going ahead with the fourth instalment of Star Trek’s rebooted series and that Chris Pine would reprise his iconic role as Captain James T. Kirk, fans everywhere were overjoyed, myself included. I come from a long line of Trekkers, and I love every story that has come out of the Stark Trek universe, but I have to be honest and admit that the rebooted “Kelvin timeline” has a special place in my heart—I blame the filter J.J. Abrams used to make Chris Pine’s eyes pop and how sleek and shiny all the technology looks.
This time, J.J. Abrams has stepped into the role of producer, and it was he who announced that it wasn’t just Chris Pine coming back for a new adventure aboard the USS Enterprise. “We are thrilled to say that we are hard at work on a new Star Trek that will be shooting by the end of [the] year that will be featuring our original cast,” he said, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
However, that announcement came as a surprise to the actors themselves, who heard about the whole thing at the same time as the rest of us. The Hollywood Reporter writes that most of the primary cast’s teams (and, of course, the actors themselves) didn’t even know of Paramount’s plans for another movie, let alone that it was happening so soon and with all of them in it.
That means that it’s difficult at this point to say who exactly is returning, since negotiations only began after that announcement—which is made all the more strange by the amount of negotiating power it has but in the cast’s hands. However, if they’re promising the return of the main cast, that’s likely to be Zachary Quinto as Commander Spock, Zoe Saldana as Lieutenant Uhura, Karl Urban as Leonard “Bones” McCoy, Simon Pegg as Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, and John Cho as Hikaru Sulu, in addition to Chris Pine as Kirk. Still, Pine is the only one we can pretty much say for certain at this point, since THR’s story makes it sound like the movie won’t happen without him.
While it is strange for the studio to hand actors that kind of negotiating power, the surprise announcement certainly got them the hype they were looking for, and the Star Trek franchise has always been a heavy hitter in Paramount’s roster, and it makes sense they’d want to roll it out again to increase the traffic around their own on-demand service, Paramount+, which has to really compete with all the other players in the streaming game.
For now, all we know is that the movie is deep into pre-production work and aiming for a December 2023 release—so hopefully we’ll hear some more information about it soon.
(via THR, images: Paramount)
