How Simon Pegg Feels About Star Trek Landing A Female Director

Simon Pegg in Star Trek 4

It's been just a few weeks since Paramount Pictures began eyeing female director S.J. Clarkson to helm the next Star Trek movie. Now, just a short time later, Clarkson is reportedly on board for the job, becoming the first female Star Trek director, ever, and the studio is looking to move forward with the next movie in the franchise. If that's exciting news to you, you aren't alone, as franchise actor Simon Pegg recently revealed how he feels about the franchise landing its first lady director. Per the actor,

I'm very excited about it. It feels belated, for a start. It's about time. I can't wait to see what she brings to it as a director, irrespective of her gender. She's done some fantastic work, I think her ideas are really inspirational and it feels like a perfectly timed thing. And so right that it's Star Trek. Embarrassingly, in 2018, it should have happened a long time ago. I can't wait to meet her and give myself over to her ideas.

Some directors are great about taking ideas from actors, but Simon Pegg has a particularly prominent position in the Star Trek universe. Not only does he play Scotty in the reimagined movie series, he also wrote the script for the 2016 movie Star Trek: Beyond. He knows the characters very well and should have some idea insofar as how to move forward in the popular sci-fi universe. He seems pretty pumped to be working S.J. Clarkson on the next project from what he told Moviefone, but the movie still seems to be in the early stages at this point.

We've known a fourth Star Trek movie would be coming for a while, however, there was some confusion about how the project would come together. This mostly had to do with there potentially being multiple projects out in the universe, one a tradition fourth Star Trek movie and one from Quentin Tarantino. Then, there was the seemingly more specific news that Quentin Tarantino wants to direct an R-rated Star Trek movie. At this point, it seems as if there will be two different movies, one from the cast we've seen in Star Trek, Star Trek into Darkness and Star Trek: Beyond, and a second, potentially R-rated version. Although if you ask previous Star Trek cast members, many would probably be on board to do an R-rated movie should they be wanted for the gig.

Now that a director seems to have been cemented in S.J. Clarkson, presumably we'll be hearing a lot more about Star Trek 4 in the coming months. It will be nice to see what a lady can do with a franchise that has a lot of strong, cool female characters, especially considering Star Trek has always been fairly male dominated on the creative side, and in fact one of Star Trek Into Darkness' big defining moments back in 2013 was throwing Alice Eve onscreen in her underwear. They'll probably be a whole lot less of that this time around...

Alice Eve In Her Underwear In Star Trek

We'll bring you any new news regarding Star Trek 4 and Quentin Tarantino's possibly/maybe R-rated version of the Star Trek universe as it comes in. In the meantime, you can take a look at the projects that have definitely moved forward with our full movies schedule.

Jessica Rawden
Managing Editor

Jessica Rawden is Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. She’s been kicking out news stories since 2007 and joined the full-time staff in 2014. She oversees news content, hiring and training for the site, and her areas of expertise include theme parks, rom-coms, Hallmark (particularly Christmas movie season), reality TV, celebrity interviews and primetime. She loves a good animated movie. Jessica has a Masters in Library Science degree from Indiana University, and used to be found behind a reference desk most definitely not shushing people. She now uses those skills in researching and tracking down information in very different ways.