It looks like Captain Kirk fans will have to watch Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to get their fix for the foreseeable future. Variety reports that Paramount has removed the untitled film from their upcoming release slate with the film initially set to hit the big screen on December 22, 2023. While the film might not be dead yet, it still isn’t a good sign when Wikipedia has an entire page devoted to just the development of this film.
The untitled Star Trek movie was set to follow the unique timeline dubbed the ‘Kelvin Timeline,’ created in Star Trek (2009) after a Romulan ship from the future travels to the past, spurning a new sequence of events when its captain destroys Vulcan out of revenge. The same cast from the previous 3 films was expected to return, including Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldaña, Karl Urban (who expressed interest but stated possible scheduling conflicts due to The Boys), John Cho, and Simon Pegg. The last 3 films also featured Anton Yelchin as Pavel Chekov, who sadly passed away 2016.
This development feels inevitable considering director Matt Shakman‘s departure from the film, after becoming attached to Marvel’s Fantastic Four film. With that type of commitment, and albeit once that’s probably a safer move over this Star Trek movie that cannot escape development, it’s not surprising he hopped franchises. With the date had already been previously pushed back once before Shakman’s departure, taking the movie off the calendar ultimately gives the minds behind this installment more time to go back to the drawing board and make a great Star Trek film.
This isn’t the first time that this conceptualized film has met controversy. Since the release of Star Trek: Beyond in 2016, there have been multiple big names attached to the project, with Quentin Tarantino, S.J. Clarkson, and Noah Hawley to name a few. Most of these abandoned iterations fell apart either due to creative decisions or breakdowns in negotiations with the cast. The latest iteration came after Matt Shakman’s success off of WandaVision. He signed on to direct the project in the Summer of 2021, but when the main cast was announced to return before they even entered negotiations, faith in the project waned further.
Despite this, the cast conveyed their enthusiasm for the film, with Pine remarking, “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.” To say the least, plenty of people are still waiting for this party to get past the planning process.