Star Trek 4: Everything we know

The new Star Trek movies introduced new actors as classic characters, and told their story across an action-packed trilogy. So where is Star Trek 4? Here’s what we know…

Paramount Pictures successfully rebooted Star Trek in 2009, with JJ Abrams directing, and the likes of Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, John Cho, and Anton Yelchin playing the crew of the USS Enterprise.

The movie was a critical and commercial success, spawning sequels Star Trek Into Darkness in 2013 and Star Trek Beyond in 2016. But, since that third film, there’s been nothing, with the new movie trapped in development hell.

So here’s everything we know about a potential Star Trek 4. It’s been a messy affair that’s seen directors and cast come and go—with cameos from the likes of Chris Hemsworth and Quentin Tarantino—but nothing in the way of an actual film… yet.

Star Trek 4: Is it happening?

Star Trek 4 is known to be in “active development” but the project has no director. So, it’s possible we will see it one day, but we could be waiting a while.

Prior to the release of Star Trek Beyond, Paramount Pictures announced plans for a sequel that would be written by JD Payne and Patrick McKay.

This version of Star Trek 4 would unite father and son, with the official synopsis as follows: “Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk will cross paths with a man he never had a chance to meet, but whose legacy has haunted him since the day he was born: his father. Chris Hemsworth, who appeared in 2009’s Star Trek, will return to the space saga as George Kirk to star alongside Pine.”

A year later, there was no news however, with Chris Pine telling MTV: “I am literally one of the last people to find out. Costume designers find out before me. Prop people find out before me. I can’t wait to make the film. I love everyone in the film. Know that. I love the world, and I will be back as many times as they ask me. I love the tall man they call Thor. I’ll do this film. If you can talk to [Star Trek producer] J.J. [Abrams] for me. Let him tell me. I’d like to find out so I can plan my life.”

Zachary Quinto also seemed unsure in 2017, telling NBC in the above video: “I don’t know [about Star Trek 4]. We are waiting. I know they were working on a script for another one and we will see how that all plays out… I’m hopeful that we will do another, but there [are] no guarantees.”

When will Star Trek 4 be released?

If Star Trek 4 happens, it won’t be anytime soon. However, while a sequel stalls, there is hope in the form of a prequel that would be an origin story for 2009’s Star Trek movie.

In March 2023, JJ Abrams told Esquire that the search for a director on Star Trek 4 was ongoing, and that “it’s the first time [since the original reboot] that we have a story that feels as compelling as the first one.” But then it all went quiet. Again.

In January 2024, Deadline posted a more detailed update, revealing that the film series was off in a brand-new direction. Andor helmer, Toby Haynes, is reportedly directing a Seth Grahame-Smith script, which would serve as an origin story set decades before the events depicted in the 2009 Star Trek.

However, the report added that Star Trek 4 also “remains in active development,” meaning a prequel and sequel could be heading to cinemas in the future. But, we still have no idea exactly when, so it’s very much a case of watch this space.

Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction in space”

Around 2017, Quentin Tarantino expressed an interest in writing and directing a Star Trek movie, and Paramount even met with the legendary filmmaker to get this idea off the ground. Sadly, this has since fallen by the wayside.

In 2018, Paramount CEO Jim Gianopulos revealed the studio had spoken with Tarantino, and was developing his project alongside the existing idea for Star Trek 4. Mark L. Smith ultimately landed the gig of working on the script and led a writers’ room while Tarantino was busy with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Inspired by the 1968 Star Trek episode ‘A Piece of the Action,’ the movie was rumored to be playing out largely on earth, in a 1930s gangster setting. Though Smith has also compared it to Thor Ragnorok in terms of its place in the Star Trek landscape.

NBC

“I liked it because I think it’s different, but the way that Ragnarok changed things,” Smith told Collider in December 2023. “It was like suddenly it had a different feel for the Marvel stuff. It was like, ‘That’s fun. That’s different.’ And I guess Guardians [of the Galaxy] to some level, but it was just like a different vibe and that’s what I thought that it could bring to Star Trek… just a different feel.”

With Tarantino winding down his directing career, he decided that he didn’t want a Star Trek movie to be his last project. But according to Smith, this iteration would have had the filmmaker’s unique stamp.

“I think his vision was just to go hard. It was a hard R. It was going to be some Pulp Fiction violence,” Smith explains. “Not a lot of the language, we saved a couple things for just special characters to kind of drop that into the Star Trek world, but it was just really the edginess and kind of that Tarantino flair that he was bringing to it. It would have been cool.”

Direct Star Trek Beyond sequel

In early 2018, SJ Clarkson was announced as the Star Trek 4 director, though later that year, contract negotiations broke down with the main cast members, meaning Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth temporarily left the project.

Development nevertheless continued, and in September of that year, Pine said he was still keen to participate. However, by January 2019 the movie was dead, and Clarkson moved on to other projects, eventually directing Madame Web.

After the fact, screenwriters Payne and McKay revealed that the plot was inspired by an episode of the series. Speaking to Esquire in 2022, Payne said: “There’s an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called ‘Relics’ where they find Scotty, who’s been trapped in a transporter for a couple of decades, and they’re able to have a cool adventure with him.

“Our conceit was, ‘What if right before the Kelvin impacted with that huge mining ship, George Kirk had tried to beam himself over to his wife’s shuttle where his son, Jim Kirk, had just been born? And what if the ship hadn’t completely exploded—what if it left some space junk?’

“Think about when you send a text message and you’ve typed it out, but you haven’t quite hit send. On the other side, they see those three little dots that someone has typed. It’s like the transporter had absorbed his pattern up into the pattern buffer, but hadn’t spit him out on the other side. It was actually a saved copy of him that was in the computer.”

McKay adds: “So the adventure is that Chris Pine and the crew of the Enterprise have to seek out the wreckage of the ship that his father died on because of a mystery and a new villain. In the ship, they stumble across his father’s pattern. They beam him out and he has no idea that no time has passed at all, and that he’s looking at his son. Then the adventure goes from there.”

The writers compared the father-son dynamic to the central relationship in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but ultimately the writers both moved on, and ended up making Lord of the Rings series Rings of Power.

Noah Hawley spinoff

Next up Noah Hawley had a crack at Star Trek 4. Hawley wanted to take the story in a new direction, away from Tarantino’s tangent and well-trodden trope of the father-son adventure.

“To call it Star Trek 4 is kind of a misnomer,” Hawley told The Hollywood Reporter in 2019. “I have my own take on the franchise as a life-long fan.” He added that his new story would require new actors, stating: “It’s early days. I don’t know. But new characters often involve new cast.”

In the same interview, Hawley references Wrath of Khan when describing his take: “It’s William Shatner putting on his reading glasses and lowering Khan’s shields, which cost like $9.50. There’s no big action sequence. He’s just more clever.

NBC

“There’s something really uplifting about that feeling. I went to Paramount and just had my own ideas for what I wanted to do with it. So that’s the direction that I’m going in. It’s still very early days, so I can’t really be more specific. But it’s going to be different.”

Cate Blanchett and Rami Malek were attached to star—with principal photography set to take place in Australia—but production was ultimately shut down by new Paramount president Emma Watts as the studio again tried to figure out the future of the franchise.

Enter Matt Shakman

Matt Shankman was the next filmmaker to enter the fray in the summer of 2021, following his successful run on Marvel’s WandaVision. The plan was to get a movie out in time for a summer 2023 release, but that never happened.

Lindsey Beer and Geneva Robertson-Dworet got to work on the script, with a summer 2022 shoot planned, and a summer 2023 release in mind.

Paramount announced at an investor event in February 2022, that the main cast would all be returning, and that Anton Yelchin—who died in 2016—would not be replaced.

Chris Pine spoke of his hopes for the movie in April 2022, telling Deadline: “I’ve always thought that Star Trek should operate in the zone that is smaller. You know, it’s not a Marvel appeal. It’s like, let’s make the movie for the people that love this group of people, that love this story, that love Star Trek. Let’s make it for them and then, if people want to come to the party, great. But make it for a price and make it, so that if it makes a half-billion dollars, that’s really good.”

Pine added: “I’ve not read a script. I met the director, Matt [Shakman], who I really like, and a producer on it that I really like. I know JJ [Abrams] is involved in it in some respects, and I met the new people over at Paramount, which is many different kind of relations—I really liked them. Everybody seems excited about the prospect of it. There’s just simply no — I don’t have a tangible script to look at.”

But by August 2022, Shakman left Star Trek 4 to make The Fantastic Four for Marvel, with Paramount releasing a statement saying: “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 the world.”

Marvel

That’s all we know about Star Trek 4 and it’s chaotic history so far, but we’ll be keeping an eye on any and all developments. Hopefully, one day, someone will make it so.

Until then, here’s our guide to the big movies releasing this month, as well as the TV shows you should be watching. Or, you can scroll down for more Star trek action:

Star Trek Discovery Season 5 details | Picard producer hints at spinoff | Patrick Stewart in Picard inspirations | Who should lead Star Trek prequel? | Andor director helming new Star Trek movie