In January, it was reported that Andor filmmaker Toby Haynes was producing a Star Trek origin film for Paramount. The film was said to be a prequel set decades before the events of J.J. Abrams' 2009 remake.
According to a March report, the prequel will serve as an origin story for the franchise's main timeline. Studio executives are said to be currently focusing on right-sizing the budgets for Star Trek films, as they've seemingly acknowledged that the franchise doesn't have the potential for billion dollar returns like Marvel and Star Wars.
The Star Trek origin movie was officially announced by Paramount during their presentation at CinemaCon on Thursday.
Haynes is indeed directing and we also received confirmation that the script was being written by Seth Grahame-Smith (The Lego Batman Movie, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter).
The film will begin production later this year, with a release date of 2025.
Fans are speculating that the prequel film will explore how Starfleet and the United Federation became the dominating powers in the universe, however this has not been verified.
Paramount also made it clear that Star Trek 4, with Chris Pine’s James Kirk, Zachary Quito’s Spock, and Zoe Saldana's Uhura is still in development.
Fan reaction has been mixed to the news of the project as it seems that the origin movie will arrive before Star Trek 4, which is thought to be slated for a 2026 release, which coincides with the 60th anniversary of the franchise.
Trekkies have been waiting for almost a decade for Star Trek 4 to be released and while they're enjoying the onslaught of new Trek content on Paramount+, they're longing for the alternate Kelvin Timeline to be closed out.
Another popular theory is that the prequel/origin film could be a retelling of the events of First Contact, which sees the Borg, a cyborg extraterrestrial race that assimilates whole civilizations. They journey back in time to Earth's history, determined to prevent humanity's first warp flight, a watershed moment that marks humanity's entrée into the cosmic stage.
It was the crew of the Enterprise-D who went back in time to stop the Borg in that film but in the new timeline, both the Borg and Enterprise-D crew could be swapped out, while keeping the general plot the same.
Are you excited for the news of another Stark Trek feature film in development? Or are you more concerned about the status of Star Trek 4? Let us know in the comment section below.