While the television component of landmark sci-fi series Star Trek is chugging along on its own tracks to progress, the movies have stalled out to a point where there’s no clear direction forward. And that path is about to become a bit muddier, as cast member Simon Pegg isn’t of the opinion that the newly announced Noah Hawley written and directed project that’s been pushed as Star Trek 4 will be just that.
As he theorized during a recent interview, Simon Pegg provided this insight on how he sees the current state of the Star Trek franchise. Here's what he said when asked if he had any part in writing Star Trek 4:
No, I don't know anything about it. Noah Hawley's been hired to write something for Star Trek, which is very exciting. He's a brilliant writer and always creates interesting stuff. Whether or not we're involved in that, I don't know. I don't think so. I don’t think that Noah’s thing is necessarily going to be Star Trek 4. I'm talking out of my ass, as usual. But we'll see what happens with that.
For those keeping score at home, the Star Trek movie universe has a couple of plates it’s been spinning in the years since Star Trek Beyond marked the last adventure of the Federation’s most intrepid crew and vessel in 2016. In the years that have followed, several ideas and helmers have come and gone in the universe that’s centered around Chris Pine’s Captain James T. Kirk and the crew he’s teamed up with on the USS Enterprise.
Originally, Star Trek 4 was going to be a time travelling adventure, which would see Chris Pine’s Kirk finally meet his dead father, Chris Hemsworth’s George. Eventually, negotiations would break down, seeing Hemsworth and Pine’s salaries putting that particular take on the future of Star Trek into the dustbin.
Fast forward to this very moment, where previously hired director S.J. Clarkson has been let go, Fargo and Legion mastermind Noah Hawley has been courted to write and direct his own Star Trek film that may or may not be the fourth in the series, and that Quentin Tarantino-helmed Trek film is still a going concern for the time being.
All of this factors into Simon Pegg’s further assessment of the current state of the franchise, as the man who once said that Tarantino would probably never direct his own Star Trek film is much more optimistic about his chances here and now:
As far as I know, Quentin Tarantino’s Star Trek idea is still kind of in the mix. That’s down to [him] about what he wants to do next, you know. There’s been talk of various spinoffs possibly. We’ll see. I’m always happy to get back into that universe. I think it'll be bittersweet for us now to do another one after losing Anton [Yelchin], just because we were very much a family. And we'll miss him more than we normally do, because he will be conspicuous by his absence. But we'll see what happens.
Strangely enough, Quentin Tarantino himself is the one that’s now pessimistic on his Star Trek coming to life, but even he admits that the conversations needed to proceed or rule out this possibility haven’t taken place yet. But as you can see in Simon Pegg’s talk with Gold Derby, nothing is clear cut about the future of Gene Roddenberry’s historic sci-fi juggernaut.
We’ll have to wait and see what Paramount says and/or does in terms of official statements to the future of Star Trek’s future. Whether it’s Noah Hawley, Quentin Tarantino, or someone else who takes the modern reboot into its fourth film is yet to be seen; but you can bet that the studio is definitely keeping this property in the mix when it comes to its theatrical apparatus.
For now, Star Trek lives on TV, with Star Trek: Discovery’s third season set to debut on CBS All Access at some point in 2020, and a new series, Star Trek: Picard, set to debut on January 23rd.
