After years of stops and starts, Paramount is making a step toward returning Star Trek to the big screen. Toby Haynes, who directed episodes of of the Star Wars series Andor, will helm a new feature, with Seth Grahame-Smith writing.
The plot is said to take place decades before the events of 2009’s Star Trek, which J.J. Abrams helmed. Abrams’ Bad Robot will produce the movie, which the studio is describing as an expansion of its Trek universe.
Trek has largely lived in the world of TV and streaming in recent years, with Paramount+ home to a number of shows, including Strange New Worlds, Discovery, the animated Lower Decks and Picard, which wrapped last year.
Star Trek Beyond, the most recent Trek film, hit theaters in 2016 and starred Chris Pine as Captain Kirk, the role he first played in 2009’s Star Trek. Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldaña, John Cho and the late Anton Yelchin also starred. Paramount is still developing a fourth Star Trek to feature that cast and described as the final chapter for this crew.
Paramount has spent years figuring out a new big screen take for Star Trek after Beyond was soft at the box office. In 2016, the studio announced a Star Trek 4 to star Chris Hemsworth (who played Kirk’s father in the 2009 film) alongside Pine’s Enterprise crew. That film never came to fruition, and filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and Noah Hawley took stabs at developing their own, unrelated takes. During a Paramount investor’s day in February 2022, producer Abrams made the surprise announcement a new installment was in the works with the Pine-led crew and would be shooting by the end of the year, a move that took even the cast by surprise. WandaVision’s Matt Shakman was on board to direct, but departed in August 2022 to take on Fantastic Four for Marvel Studios.
Smith, known as the author of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and the scribe behind features such as The Lego Batman Movie, is repped by WME and attorneys PJ Shapiro and Wendy Kirk.
This would mark the first feature for Haynes, who helmed the dark, celebrated Star Trek-inspired episode of Black Mirror, “USS Callister.” He is repped by WME and attorney Peter Nelson.
Deadline first reported the news.
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