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The last several years have been quite good for Star Trek fans on the TV front, with shows like Discovery, Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks keeping Paramount+ subscribers entertained. The film side of the franchise, however, has been decidedly lacking, as there’ve been no Star Trek movies released since 2016’s Star Trek Beyond. However, Lindsey Anderson Beer, who’s writing Star Trek 4, has shared a promising update on Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto’s next outing as Kirk and Spock, one which legitimately surprised me.
Star Trek 4 has been languishing in development hell for well over half a decade, and given all its false starts, I’d assumed that there was no chance of this movie ever getting made, or at the very least it had been tabled for the time being. Yet, while promoting her new movie Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, Beer informed Collider that Star Trek 4 is still moving down the creative pipeline, saying:
It is, it’s still on the tracks. I love that project, and it was another one that I had to hop off of to direct this movie, and that was a hard thing to do. But I love that everybody involved with that project.
So per Lindsey Anderson Beer’s latest statement, while Star Trek 4 is still in the early stages, she sounds confident that it will eventually get off the ground. Beer was announced in summer 2021 to be co-writing the Star Trek 4 script with Geneva Robertson-Dworet, back when WandaVision’s Matt Shakman was still attached to direct. Now that Pet Sematary: Bloodlines is in the can and headed to Paramount+ soon, it’s unclear if Beer is set to do more work on the Star Trek 4 script at some point or if that project is well behind her, but either way, she’s in the loop enough to know that the next Kelvin timeline-set story hasn’t been shelved.
Beer’s comment follows six months after J.J. Abrams, who directed the first two Kelvin movies and remains a producer on this corner of the franchise, said that he thinks Star Trek 4’s story is “as compelling” as 2009’s Star Trek, which kicked off the Kelvin timeline. At one time, the plan for Star Trek 4 was to have Chris Pine’s James T. Kirk meet his father, Chris Hemsworth’s George Kirk, who died at the beginning of Star Trek shortly after James was born. However, that version of the movie fell through due to Pine and Hemsworth having pay disputes with Paramount and the latter not approving of the script, resulting in it being officially shelved by early 2019.
No information about Lindsey Anderson Beer and Geneva Robertson-Dworet’s Star Trek 4 script has been shared with the public, and with Matt Shakman having exited the project to direct Fantastic Four in August 2022, the next Kelvin story has been left in a holding pattern. Ideally Beer’s assessment of the situation means that Star Trek 4 can finally start making some meaningful progress again, even if we don’t have a timetable for it just yet. Star Trek has experienced a resurgence on TV thanks to streaming, so it’d be a shame if this franchise couldn’t re-secure a foothold in the theatrical realm again to capitalize on that popularity.
It is worth noting, though, that there is at least one Star Trek movie to look forward to besides Star Trek 4, as the Michelle Yeo-led Section 31 has shifted from a TV series to a feature-length story, though it will be a Paramount+ exclusive. In any case, once there’s a major development with Star Trek 4, we’ll let you know. Until then, keep track of what movies are scheduled with our 2023 release schedule and 2024 release schedule.