It’s a great time to be a Star Trek fan right now with a slew of TV shows going on. That is — unless you want to see Trek on the big screen, in which case it’s a pretty sucky time. The suck just got harder, in fact, as Paramount has removed its planned new Star Trek movie from its release schedule, making yet another delay for the movie.
This shouldn’t come as too much of a shock to anyone. The movie has been routinely delayed for years since the release of Star Trek Beyond (better than you think it was), and it lost its director, Matt Shakman, last month, meaning its scheduled release of December 22, 2023 was looking pretty impossible. Even without losing its director, the film has been in limbo so long it feels like Paramount will never get it out the door.
The new Star Trek movie was set to return to the Kelvin timeline in which Chris Pine plays Kirk, Zachary Quinto plays Spock, Zoe Saldana plays Uhura, Karl Urban plays Bones, John Cho plays Sulu, and Simon Pegg plays Scotty. It wasn’t even clear if all the actors, most of which are in high demand, were signed on anyway. Despite producer JJ Abrams making an announcement this past February that they were all returning, none of them had been signed to contracts yet. The entire path towards this film has been a major mess, with the studio even flirting with letting Quentin Tarantino make a Star Trek film.
Now, they appear to once again be back at square one. With a slew of successful TV shows and the immense popularity of Anson Mount’s hair, there probably isn’t a better time for them to be dropping a new Star Trek movie, but they just can’t seem to get out of their own way with it, if the Paramount release schedule removal is any indication. While Trek is Paramount’s powerhouse franchise, maybe the message here is that its true home is on the small screen?
