What exactly is going on with Star Trek 4? This has been one of the big questions of 2019 as Paramount has struggled to figure out what's next for the iconic sci-fi franchise. At one point they had hired SJ Clarkson to be the first female Star Trek director ever, but contract disputes with Chris Pine and a returning Chris Hemsworth put the kibosh on that. Then we began to hear about an R-rated film directed by Quentin Tarantino, but that seems to have taken a backseat to a new sequel by Lucy in the Sky director Noah Hawley.
While Hawley's film appears to be in the pole position right now, we don't even have assurances what that will be, and series actor Simon Pegg doesn't know, either. In an interview with GoldDerby, Pegg say he's not even sure Hawley's film will be Star Trek 4, and thus may not include him, Pine, or anybody from the "Kelvin timeline" created by JJ Abrams...
“I don’t know anything about it. I think Noah Hawley’s been hired to write something for ‘Star Trek,’ which is very exciting. He’s a brilliant writer and always creates interesting stuff. Whether or not we’re involved with that, I don’t know. I don’t think so and I don’t think Noah’s thing is necessarily going to be ‘Star Trek 4.’”
Pegg made it clear that he's totally uninformed on the matter and is "talking out of my ass as usual", but it says something that so much uncertainty remains about one of Paramount's most important franchises. The suggestion seems to be that Hawley's movie, or perhaps even Tarantino's, could be spinoffs with brand new casts. It's been diminishing returns on Star Trek, with 2016's Star Trek Beyond grossing a low of $343M.
