Like gossip barely overheard in the corner of Quark’s bar on space station Deep Space Nine, its been hard to understand exactly what is going on with new Star Trek films. Last year, fans were stunned (pun intended) to discover Quentin Tarantino might helm a Trek movie, while Simon Pegg maintains a sequel to Beyond will still happen. Now, the latest news makes it sound like both things are happening. Or maybe not?
On Wednesday, multiple people who attended Cinema Con reported Jim Gianopulos, chairman-CEO of Paramount, did, in fact, confirm there are two more Trek films in development. However, there were zero specific details offered outside of this number. Speculatively, these two films could simply be Simon Pegg and Doug Jung’s sequel to Beyond and whatever the Tarantino project ends up looking like. Back in 2016, Skydance and Paramount seemingly confirmed that a sequel to Beyond was already in the works that would feature the return of Chris Hemsworth as George Kirk, James T. Kirk’s father who died in the 2009 film titled just Star Trek. However, since then, no one involved (including Hemsworth and Chris Pine) seem to have any clear idea as to the status of such a project.
Previously, Simon Pegg has said that the Beyond sequel and anything happening with Tarantino’s Trek pitch is “separate.” Now, the confirmation from Gianopulos would seem to back that up. If there are exactly two Trek films in the pipeline from the film studio, it stands to reason one is Beyond sequel, and one is the possibly hardcore R-Rated Tarantino concept.
Unless of course, neither of those projects is happening at all. Since late last year, there have been talks that Viacom (the parent company of CBS) could merge with Paramount once again, which would put the TV rights and the film rights to Star Trek all back under one roof. As of Thursday, Paramount has yet to comment on the status of the talks with CBS.
So, what are these two new Trek movies from Paramount? Are they separate concepts that might wrap up the Kelvin universe, and then take the franchise in a new direction? Or are they something a little more ambitious all together?
Because of the TV canon and film canon of Trek was reunified, it could mean this franchise could boldly attempt more interconnection. The USS Enterprise appeared in the season finale of CBS’s Star Trek: Discovery; could that same version of the Enterprise crossover into a new film? A Spock said, “there are always possibilities.” The second season for Star Trek: Discovery does not have a release date at this time, but began filming earlier this month.
