A fourth Star Trek movie starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and the rest of the latest generation of the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise has been in development since the last movie, Star Trek Beyond, premiered in theaters. But that was in 2016, and now six years later, the movie does not seem any closer to arriving than then.
This week the project lost yet another director. Earlier this year, Paramount hired Matt Shakman, best known as the director of Marvel’s WandaVision, to helm the project. But now Shakman is the guy Marvel wants to direct their Fantastic Four movie, and unless he has a double of himself from the Mirror Universe hanging around, he can’t be in two places at once. Which means Star Trek heads back to the drawing board to look for a new filmmaker to take command of the Enterprise for Star Trek 4.
Here was Paramount’s statement on the news (via Deadline)
Matt Shakman is an incredibly talented filmmaker, and we regret the timing didn’t align for him to direct our upcoming Star Trek film. We are grateful for his many contributions, are excited about the creative vision of this next chapter and look forward to bringing it to audiences all around world.
This is at least the fourth different version of Star Trek 4 to fall apart at the development phase. The first version, announced when Star Trek Beyond was still in release would have involved time travel and seen Chris Hemsworth reprise his role as Captain Kirk’s father from 2009’s Star Trek. Then Quentin Tarantino flirted with the project for months and months, and worked on a script with The Revenant’s Mark L. Smith. After they abandoned the film, Noah Hawley came in for a while and worked on his own Star Trek.
After Hawley bailed, that’s when Shakman came in. But now Shakman is gone too. Who’s next? Surely someone out there wants to make a Star Trek movie!
