Seven years after the release of the last feature film, the “Star Trek” saga seems ready to move forward on the big screen, as a fourth feature film has been on the way since 2022.
To call it the third film in its Limitless franchise and stall after that is a bit of a paradox. Yet this is what the situation of Star Trek in the cinema since 2016 and the release of the third opus which, less liked than the two previous ones, had signed a disappointing score even if it is not so far from theirs at the box- global office.
With 343.5 million dollars in revenue, it certainly makes a little less than the reboot signed JJ Abrams (380.7 million greenbacks in 2009) and remains far from the record held by Star Trek Into Darkness (broadcast this Tuesday, May 30 on NRJ 12) with its 467.4 million. A fourth film is however quickly mentioned… and this is where the Enterprise stalls.
In April 2018, the interpreter of Spock Zachary Quinto announces that three scenarios are in development. Four if we add the project of Quentin Tarantino who, after his aborted Casino Royale, wishes to put his paw on another outstanding pop culture franchise. The director of Pulp Fiction doesn’t know it yet at this point, but it won’t happen.
If things seem complicated at first, they don’t work out afterwards. First woman propelled in command of an episode, SJ Clarkson withdraws because she has episodes of Game of Thrones on fire. Noah Hawley (Legion, Fargo) is also developing a project on his own, but it falls through in August 2020, in the middle of Covid, and one of the reasons given is a script revolving around a story of deadly virus.
ONE STEP FORWARD…
The fans, who had been promised a reunion between Chris Pine (Kirk) and Chris Hemsworth (interpreter of his father in the opening scene of Star Trek in 2009) thanks to the magic of time travel, are for their costs. But they console themselves with the small screen, where different series (Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds) allow the franchise to remain active.
Paramount, however, reserves a date (June 9, 2023) and, in January 2022, the news that fans were no longer waiting for falls: the new film will indeed see the light of day, and the cast in place since the reboot signed JJ Abrams Will be back. An announcement that surprises many people … starting with the actors themselves, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter a few days later.
… THREE STEPS BACK
Enough to trouble a feature film which, a few months later, lost its director Matt Shakman, who left for Marvel to direct The Fantastic 4, after directing the first and last season of WandaVision. To date, no one has taken up the vacancy (while the MCU feature has since been pushed back), leaving the Enterprise in the garage.
But fans of a saga such as Star Trek, which has been going on since 1966, know very well that there is no point in despairing and that nothing is ever really over in the universe created by Gene Roddenberry. Who would have thought, for example, that the franchise would return, successfully to the cinema? Or that Patrick Stewart would reprise his role as Jean-Luc Picard?