The Federation’s Ideals Would Be Put To The Test If Noah Hawley Gets To Make His Star Trek Movie

Earlier this week, Noah Hawley confirmed his Star Trek movie project has been put on hold by Paramount’s new management, but he also revealed he has written a script and had started earlier design work when he got the word to go into “stasis” from the studio. In a new interview, he has hinted about some of the themes of his project.

The Federation needs to be saved

In his Variety interview earlier in the week, Hawley said he wants to “start from scratch” with a new crew for his Star Trek film. The writer/director’s publicity tour for the upcoming fourth season of his Emmy-winning FX series Fargo continues, and he recently spoke to Entertainment Weekly, telling them a bit more about his approach to Star Trek:

I can’t say much about it except it’s an argument for why humanity should prevail and why we should come together and unite, which I think is important – to look at the United Federation of Planets and remember at some point Earth is what we are now and then we invented warp technology and met extraterrestrial life and everybody came together. But how? How did we get from where we are now to where they are then? And what happens if that utopian reality is challenged? There are times of challenge and war when we have to prove our values all over again. Maybe there’s a time in the Federation where this ideal is challenged and it won’t survive on its own. It needs to be saved.

The only other thing that has been reported about Hawley’s film is that the story (which he began working on last year) “might be about a deadly virus,” which could be a bit too on the nose for the times we now find ourselves are living in.

Reading between the lines, it all sounds like Hawley wants to make a Star Trek movie that is relevant to today’s audience with possible contemporary themes. Challenging the utopian ideals of the Federation could also show some darker themes. Hawley’s commentary echoes some of the sentiments expressed by producers of recent CBS Star Trek series who have also strived to show characters facing challenges to fight for Starfleet’s ideals.

Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) speaks about the Federation’s ideals in the season one finale of Star Trek: Discovery

As of now, Hawley’s Star Trek project is one of three that Paramount’s new head of motion pictures is considering. According to Deadline, reviving the Star Trek 4 project that brings back Chris Hemsworth is the current front-runner to revive the franchise on the big screen. But Hawley has said his project isn’t dead, and Deadline also reported that Paramount could end up moving forward with multiple Trek projects, including the one based on an idea from Quentin Tarantino. This multi-pronged (and not necessarily connected) approach is not unlike how Warner Bros. is handling the various DC Universe films.

With Paramount reportedly making Trek a priority again, and with Hollywood slowly returning to production, hopefully, we will know more about the future of the film franchise by the end of the year.


Keep up with all the news upcoming Trek films at TrekMovie.com.

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sounds super interesting :)

I agree, super interesting and groundbreaking :)

I don’t see how, didn’t we see the Federations ideals challenged a fair bit in DS9, as well as other individual episodes of every other series. Episodes like Equinox, Pegasus and others come to mind.

Put to the test… Star Trek itself should be put to the test more often.

The Federation is not a utopia alright but it’s a society we should strive to be. Challenging those ideals means that its worth saving in the end.

Noah Hawley is really smart. I want to his Star Trek film now. Curious to see how it turns out.

Paramount should focus on the Noah Hawley project. It has so much potential.

You want it now?? You’re likely going to be dissapointed, there’s no potential in dead projects.

Perhaps he will be disappointed but attainability does not govern desire and nor should it. The cynic in me wouldn’t necessarily disagree with your outlook but my optimistic side hopes you’re wrong. Regardless of whether it sees the light of day a movie by somebody associated with smart and entertaining television who seemingly wanted do away with the usual brilliant and evil villain wants to destroy earth plot certainly piqued my interested.

You are a very optimistic, affirmative and open-minded person. I really admire these posts of yours although I lack that sort of positivity sometimes.

I dunno… If this Hawley project was really about some sort of intergalactic pandemic whiping out most life in the galaxy as we know it I’m rather glad this Hawley project gets hauled away AS garbage (citing that Klingon from TOS Trouble With Tribbles)…

I’m not super-excited for that sort of bleak vision although it would be sort of topical given Covid-19 and all. But Star Trek isn’t supposed to be The Warping Dead. But then, DSC S3’s The Burn and – if it ever happens – PIC S2 will give us the Trek version of our little pandemic anyway.

sounds super boring :(

Totally agree!! Sounds like blowing up the Enterprise yet again only its the Galaxy this time. Also sounds like Hawley is trying to generate interest in his film with interviews to get Paramounts attention. Not interested in his plot or vision of Star Trek!!

Maybe this idea was fresh when Hawley first thought of it, but we’ve had lots of shows and movies put Federation values to the test recently. The Star Trek fans I talk with are mostly hungry for good old utopian Federation stories again.

(Not the super-bland kind from Seasons 1 and 2 of TNG, but stories that are still engaging but where Starfleet is made up of GOOD people who right wrongs and solve problems and spread peace.)

I have to agree (mostly), although I really like TNG S1+2. But yeah, I think there has been to many of those “challenges” recently and not so recently already. Trek has been facing those attempts so often there is more of that dark and brooding stuff than there is actually good old utopian Trek.

The only “classic” Trek series are TOS and TNG plus probably most of ENT. There have been dark, villain-driven movies for decades. DS9 was a very dark show for its day and age, VOY was toying wih challenging values from day one (although they never really got down and dirty the way some fans wanted them to). ENT S3 introduced torture for a higher sake. DSC and PIC both experimented with a weird mix of “mature” violence, bad language, sexuality and substance abuse. LD is one major challenge if you deem adult animated comedy as challening on its own…

All I want is to see a crew of nice blokes on a handsome starship exploring strange new worlds and new life with some historical, ecological and sociopolitical references for educational purposes.

All I want is to see a crew of nice blokes on a handsome starship exploring strange new worlds and new life with some historical, ecological and sociopolitical references for educational purposes.

I agree so much! Well, I do if “blokes” also includes women. :-)

I’d like to see them hire some science fiction writers, like Robert J. Sawyer or Lois McMaster Bujold, to help them write a script. Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, Norman Spinrad, and other SF writers added SO much to TOS…

I’d add names like John Scalzi and Andy Weir to your list of sci-fi authors as well. Star Trek definitely needs to get proper sci-fi writers back into the fold.

Robert J. Sawyer wrote one of the episodes for “Star Trek Continues” and it was the best Star Trek story I’ve seen in decades.

And people wonder why they always have to go back to the same tired plot of a vengeful villain hellbent on vanquishing Earth…

The Voyage Home had no villain, was well loved by fans, and did very well at the box office. It’s lack of imagination that produces villain-heavy films, not the nature of the Federation.

Except whatever they propose fans are going to complain so why take risks?

If the fans are going to react the same no matter what, that actually frees them to take any risk they please.

I think @kmart gives an excellent explanation of why they don’t take risks below.

recent successful sf movies suggest audiences are ready for a ‘trek’ movie that truly explores the final frontier.

Do you mean the human heart?

‘i had a brother once….’

That’s what studio execs would call a ‘nonrecurring phenomena,’ which is how they explained success of THE FOUR SEASONS and ON GOLDEN POND, which lacked explosions, bare boobs and other ‘key ingredients.’ When you have a popular film that defies their tenets of what makes a hit, instead of trying to understand it and learn from it, they dismiss it as a one-off. Was true in ’80 and is still true in most cases.

I think this shows the dif between TWOK and TVH … everybody THINKS they understand how to deliver a Khan level threat, but nobody trusts to make a movie where it is all about the cast and chemistry, with the danger just being a motivator.

This movie keeps getting my attention the more Noah Hawley talks about it

I prefer my trek to be dark.

The thing is that Hawley seems to be proposing an actual science-based challenge to the Federation, rather a super-villain.

So, that would be new for the films. However, it would be classic A-plot point from television Trek, but magnified in impact beyond a single system or sector.

It just happens that Discovery may be doing something analogous.

Amen!!

I feel like this is what they said that Beyond was going to be about and then super wasn’t.

It’s too vague for me to have any feelings about, although I love the idea of getting JJ out of Trek and leaving the Kelvin crew in its own weird little alternate timeline.

This did have me thinking though that a film series that takes place during “The Burn” might be an interesting idea.

The frontier pushes back……nah, not really.

The frontier strikes back

Revenge of the Frontier

Attack of the Frontier

Frontiers of a Clown

Discovery will go over “The Burn” tho

I liked the Kelvin timeline and think it could have morphed into perhaps good movies with the right writers. STID was in my opinion a mistake and just seems it was chosen because no one had a clue for the second movie. It just seems like the timeline was rushed between the first and third movies without showing the progression of how the friendships and loyalty developed between the main characters. Still would like to see this cast in a well written script for at the minimum a conclusion of their mission.

Still super dead.

Phil still has no insider knowledge that he claims to have.

Why does Edosian Explosion talk about Phil in the third person in direct response to him?

I don’t think Phil has ever claimed to have insider knowledge. He just has a more pessimistic (some might say more realistic) interpretation of the situation. Hawley’s movie idea has been put on hold by Paramount, as reported by Variety. That means Paramount is not pursuing it anymore. For now, the project is dead. Could Paramount decide later to have a second look at it? Of course they could. No project is ever so dead that it cannot be resuscitated. But for the moment, even if Hawley continues to give more details about his pitch, Paramount is not moving forward with it in any way.

Diginon ignores that Hawley himself has said that his project is not dead. Hawley knows more than Diginon does about the status of his project.

I’m well aware of what Hawley has said. He said that it’s “in stasis” which is just a fancy way of saying that nothing is happening with it. The Variety article has this nice quote in it:

But in terms of new screen projects, his plate is — for the first time in more than a decade — empty.

So Hawley himself doesn’t expect to work on it any time soon.

Diginon interprets the quote wrongly.

I’d like to see them go ahead with all three and then release them each year starting in 2023. I’d also like to see the project Nick Meyer was working on for All Access. I want ALL OF THE STAR TREK.

*smile* I love your Trek enthusiasm!

I like your thinking Tek.

At this point I feel like it’ll be bigger news when someone makes a Star Trek production that isn’t about challenging the utopian reality of the Federation. It’s an idea with obvious story potential, as I imagine the producers of Star Trek VI, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Insurrection, Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek: Discovery, and Star Trek: Picard all realized, but the range of properties in that list should indicate that just having the idea is not automatically evidence of a well thought-out and interesting story.

Plus which, I was already concerned that since Enterprise, Star Trek has been mostly making stories about itself. The franchise is big enough that they can get away with that, but it’s still inherently limiting from both an audience and storytelling standpoint. Since Starfleet and the Federation don’t actually exist, and they don’t have an obvious real-world analogue (the UN? Space Force?), you’re only going to get so much mileage out of a story that’s mainly about critiquing it.

Point to a Hawley project outside of the last feature that didn’t have a well-thought-out and interesting story.

Lucy in the Sky or is that the box office bomb you are referring to?

LOL

all for this though picard and discovery are doing this as well… discovery especially this upcoming season… and picard did it exceptionally well for season 1… the best first season of a trek show since TOS. maybe with the series dealing with so much federation collapse danger a fun movie would be better right now… tarantinos sounds all fun… the father son prob a mix… and this all earnest save the federation stuff… i’d be happy with any of the TBH

The problem with his premise is that we DON’T go from where we are now to where they are in the 23rd century. Star Trek isn’t our future. If it were, then the Enterprise crew, upon visiting the 1960s, 1980, 1990s, etc., would be recognizable as TV stars Shatner, Nimoy, etc. It’s a different timeline, one in which the Eugenics Wars happened in 1993. So what is happening in our 2020 is irrelevant to Star Trek’s 2020.

This is true of literally every fictional TV programme ever, that people don’t recognise the actors and they exist in a world where presumably the given TV show doesn’t exist or if it does it’s in a fictionalised form. It would be a bit of an issue to do things otherwise.

You’re missing my point, which is that OUR now isn’t THEIR now. The Star Trek world of 2020 is VERY, VERY different than our 2020, so his point is moot.

In general it sounds fine, but its SO vague obviously it doesn’t tell us anything other than there is some conflict with Federation values or something.

But yes, this is clearly nothing new. Every movie series has done it to a degree. With TOS it was TUC. With TNG it was Insurrection. With the Kelvin movies it was STID and so on. All these films was about Starfleet officers turning their back on Federation values, all because, ironically, they were afraid the Federation itself might lose its own survival.

And obviously its been done numerous times on the shows themselves, DS9 being the biggest one (and why its my favorite show). But TNG also done it a few times. DIS and PIC also had these types of story lines as well. PIC it wasn’t as direct (and why the show could’ve been stronger) but you can argue refusing to help the Romulans and banning all Synths, which basically is considered another life form, as conflicting with Federation ideals. DIS literally proposed genocide against the Klingons to win a war. Federation values don’t get more conflicted than that. ;)

But of course it doesn’t mean it can’t be good or unique. Since we do know it deals with a virus then it could bring some interesting issues, many we are dealing with in the present day, but the ‘Federation values being tested’ is old as Trek itself at this point.

But I will take that idea over a rehash of A piece of the Action or meeting Kirk’s dad again any day of the week. ;)

I don’t mean to be a downer from a superficial concept presented in the article… but isn’t literally every 2nd Star Trek movie or episode about “testing the ideals of the Federation” ????

Endless corrupt admirals… Picards reason for leaving Starfleet. whatever is happening in Disco S3…. isn’t it all more of the same?

I guess it’s unfair for me to make that statement. After hundreds and hundreds of Star Trek episodes, maybe endless retreads is ok for the purpose of producing “something”.

Pretty much. But we haven’t seen a virus story, at least one that affects the entire Federation, so there may be a different angle we haven’t seen before.

Sounds a bit like Insurrection to be honest but with a higher budget and a totally new crew. I am down with the idea of a new crew but I think the story needs to be a little more creative or original. The multi-film approach also sounds interesting, but I don’t know if it can work for Star Trek. For us fans this can be good, but for normal people it can be a little confusing.

No surprise this got shelved even before the universally disliked Daddy-script – the well-meaning outsider who knows best what Trek needs – “probing” its ideals – got to be thoroughly debunked as snake oil treatment since Chabon’s very recent failed attempt with Picard at the latest, and Bryan Fuller’s quest at reinventing what didnt need reinventing with Discovery before that (we all know how that ended!)

No, what Star Trek actually needs in these trying times is to put the fiction back into science fiction, alongside with the capital S (hard) Science – that means less political BS, less fantasy, less soap opera and more sense of wonder, exploration and Utopian escapism!

Hire some real scifi writers instead of this endless parade of talentless hacks, and get ‘er done!

Fuller was not involved in what ultimately became Disc on screen

He did make decisions about production design and other elements that the replacement showrunners had to live with.

We know from Tamara Deverell that the set construction budget had been already spent on some large and expensive sets (photon torpedo bay where torpedoes were manually loaded similarly to the Kelvin movies) that could only be repurposed (to Stamets Spore drive lab).

Yes he was. The early episodes are built off what he created.

“Fuller was not involved”

He sure was involved, nay, initiated the m0lesting of the established canon Klingon design! Rule numero uno: don’t fix what ain’t broken ;)

The “Daddy script” wasn’t “universally disliked” since only a few people have read it.

Among them, Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth, the two stars of the proposed movie. I consider that sufficient ;)

Yeah Hemsworth himself said in an interview (that Trekmovie posted) that he thought the script was too weak and wasn’t good enough to do. He claims that’s the real reason he walked away. I still think it was mostly money but it obviously can be both.

Kind of funny though many thought this would get settled in a few weeks, including some of the cast like Karl Urban. Now two years later and nope! ;)

I can see why Paramount is now trying to make a film with a new cast.

I can believe it’s a combination of reasons. I would guess there are at least three factors that make actors decide for or against a movie: 1) script, 2) money, 3) people involved. Obviously, the best movies are those where all three factors come together. Actors may ignore a weak script if they feel they can still make some easy money. Even A-list actors are known to sometimes take roles in small films if they like the script or the people involved. But combine a studio trying to renegotiate his salary and a script he didn’t particularly care for and the signs don’t look good. Especially if he had other (better) offers.

I can see why Paramount is now trying to make a film with a new cast

I don’t see that they are. They have shelved Hawley’s pitch and, by recent accounts, seem to put more trust in the Hemsworth story.

I think that’s just PR talk, especially when we are literally talking about Hemsworth walking away because he said the story wasn’t strong enough. Are they going to have someone rewrite it? Did he say he would still be interested in doing it? And most importantly are they going to pay him what he originally wanted?

Obviously anything is possible, but I’m really not holding my breath either. I think Paramount has no clue what they want to do with these movies or they would greenlight something by now. And I just don’t see the Kelvan cast as that important if they already hired someone to make a new film without them. The writing seems to be on the wall to me.

I’m not saying we will be seeing the Hemsworth story. Paramount would need to convince Pine and Hemsworth to return to the table. Given the limited financial success of the previous movies, they’d probably also want to make the movie for substantially less. But you can bet that they would rewrite it in a heartbeat if that meant Pine and Hemsworth would agree to do it. Scripts get rewritten all the time.
Obviously, Paramount is exploring several options. Commissioning a writer to draft a script doesn’t cost too much. So until they actually commit to doing any one of these it doesn’t mean much.

I agree. I’m only saying is it doesn’t sound like anything is really being done. That’s what I mean by PR talk. I think all they did was decide not to go with Hawley’s movie and it’s all on the back burner for now.

No one seems to be in a rush to make another film. I also don’t think there is any push to use the Kelvin cast or they would’ve just tried to do something with the first two scripts they already had. I hate to say this but I don’t see them even green lighting another film for a few more years at this point and will probably just want to start over by then.

I was the guy that was positive another film would be out by 2019. Now I’ve gone the other way. ;)

“I can’t say much about it except it’s an argument for why humanity should prevail and why we should come together and unite, which I think is important – to look at the United Federation of Planets and remember at some point Earth is what we are now and then we invented warp technology and met extraterrestrial life and everybody came together. But how? How did we get from where we are now to where they are then?”

It sounds like Noah Hawley ought to be making Star Trek: Enterprise: The Motion Picture to me.

maybe it will do what ‘beyond’ promised but failed to do, challenge the notion that the fed/starfleet do right in its expansion through the a quadrant.

Beyond was the best Star Trek film since The Undiscovered Country.

The krall/Edison thing turned out to be another mad man with a weapon mad at the fed/Starfleet.
And ‘first contact’ is the best since UC.

Hmm. It feels like what he says sounds like everything anyone who made trek recently was saying.
Or maybe even what everyone does with film these days.

Challange the Past.

Its technically not a bad thing but its far from a fresh and intrguing take of storytelling, basicly.
Of course it can be played very well and can actually become very good.

I loved what Tha Last Jedi did with Star Wars, it was pretty much what I hoped to see one day but now I would like to see things going into some even more fresh directions.

And Challange the federations Ideals or something like that sounds a bit standard.

Sounds like a better idea for a TV series than a feature film (Even though we have seen these ideals tested in Enterprise and Disco). I don’t know that a studio on shaky financial ground would want to invest in an entirely new crew in a movie situation. This could all have been leverage against Chris Pine for all we know. Maybe it worked as leverage?

Yes, sounds like that the good stuff comes at the end and then we’d have to wait for Star Trek 5

This sounds like a big risk for a worldwide market

Star Trek 09 had Nimoy to help it on its way

I don’t think Nimoy helped with international markets. This isn’t a knock against him but he isn’t exactly famous for anything besides Trek and, historically, Trek hasn’t performed well in international markets (with some exceptions). Nimoy was there to entice existing fans to give the new movie a chance.

Nimoy did, of course, spend several seasons as a regular on MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, not exactly a slouch of a franchise these days, albeit in its theatrical form.

The issue is whether viewers outside the United States and Canada would know Nimoy well enough to be motivated to go out to a theater to see a movie.

For those who were established TOS fans, Nimoy’s appearance was a kind of blessing on the film. His MI television presence was not as likely to have relevance.

Not a big market obviously, but he was a pull in the UK

Established Spock fans wanted to see him again

The thing is the 09 film actually bombed internationally. It only made $130 million overseas. That’s what an MCU movie makes the first weekend internationally. Nimoy presence certainly got hardcore fans more interested in the movie but they were going to go anyway. The movie really succeeded in the U.S. (where most do). But overseas it was only a factor in a few markets, but I seriously doubt it had much to do with Nimoy being there. Don’t get me wrong, it was nice to have him for long time fans but that didn’t make any big difference box office wise, at least not overseas.

STID did a lot better overseas though but that was mostly due to China and the big push for 3D at the time.

09 movie actually increased what was a stagnant international box office for ‘trek’ movies.

Well yeah, but that’s because the 2009 movie was really the first time Star Trek was distributed internationally on a wide level. Before then the Trek movies had limited international distribution because the franchise was always viewed as more for Americans. They put it in a few European countries and Australia but that was usually about it. About a dozen or less markets overall. I was living in Korea when Nemesis came out. It wasn’t even shown there but came out on video about 6 months later.

But 2009 film had a huge expansion and was in 50+ markets like most tentpole films gets. So this was oddly the first time a Trek movie had a big international release.

So you’re not wrong, but that’s only because it was the first time Star Trek was made to compete like other major franchises. Ironically that’s the entire reason the Kelvin films got the budgets they did. That’s why they were made more like a Star Wars movie than a Star Trek one, to attract a bigger international audience. Remember the first premiere took place in Australia, not America. I know, I was there at the first premiere. It was surreal to see Star Trek treated like Tom Cruise was in the movie lol. Paramount pulled out all the stops for it that no other Star Trek film remotely got, because they never spent anywhere close to what the 2009 film cost.

That said they didn’t expect the first film to do that well overseas BUT they still expected around $150 million minimum and it sill came up short by around $20 million. But STID did much better of course but that’s also because they distributed it even wider, made it in 3D and China was a HUGE factor for that movie. But it finally played more like a big move overseas if still on the softer side.

But then Beyond came out and the foreign BO fell hard compared to STID but still better than the first one. But I think the writing was on the wall that Star Trek is just not an international player as they hoped and probably a big reason why the films are in flux now.

2 seasons, and he didn’t hold a candle to Martin Landau, whom he was succeeding. On the other hand, Lesley Warren was more convincing than Barbara Bain a lot of the time, but she didn’t win Emmys like BB did.

09 messed things up by spending way too much on the movie. They weren’t going to be able to make a cheapie after that, not with those creatives in control. 09 should have been a 90 mil film, tops, and had a good script, instead of that cesspool that got vomited into theaters.

Nimoy had maybe ten minutes of screen time and he wasn’t even in the first main trailer. As said he was there to entice the fans like us who already loved Star Trek and TOS. Not new fans.

A teenager from Australia or France isn’t going to see a movie because an 80 year old actor they never heard of is in the movie.

And I have a feeling whatever characters is in Hawley’s movie, they are probably going to get a few new but proven actors to be in it and that people will know. The main characters could even be played by a huge actor and my guess way more known then Nimoy. ;)

the kelvin line did give the movies a boost at the international boost office, especially with ‘darkness’ when cumberbatch appeared during the height of his ‘sherlock’ fame.

Yes, the Kelvin movies made a big push at the international box office, but not based on Nimoy’s popularity. Cumberbatch certainly helped in several markets (and weren’t they trying to get Benicio del Toro for the role initially?). Beyond had Idris Elba although he was completely unrecognizable for most of the movie so I don’t know how successful that was.

I always thought a *very* early film or series set in the late 21st century would be interesting. The writers have never really tried to explain the detail of how Earth supposedly got from the position it was in in the 2060s to the world we see in Enterprise.

So, a Federation origin story with a virus included. Nothing could make me run to the theater less.

Glad it won’t be made using my money.

You have got my attention. Just spitballing here, the Fed could be put to the test a couple of ways- one, there’s a hawkish jerk and he wants to militarize Starfleet up the wazoo… OR, there’s a guy with a funny accent and he wants to test the Fed because he hates, HATES, unity. He thinks unity is not a strength but a weakness. OR, there are some Starfleet brass and they want to sabotage a peace treaty because they HATE peace, and prefer war (similar to the first idea). OR, there is a Starfleet admiral and he wants to forcibly relocate a simple and proud people for reasons, and he might even use a virus to do so. A lot of ways to go here, curious to see how this pans out…

Or! oh! there could be a 9/11-analogue attack and the Federation needs to go onto a war footing! But then–get this–it turns out that everything…Is Not As It Seems! dun-dun-dun!

Oh my God, why has ever Star Trek project for the last 20 years felt the need to “put the Federation’s ideals to the test”? And why does everyone proposing it think that it’s a new sort of concept that no one has ever done before and that they’re very clever and original and not ripping off things that Deep Space Nine did when I was literally in elementary school?

The same reason why SMG color of lead in a Star Trek show when Avery Brooks beat her to it by 20 years, because they don’t know the franchise as much as they pretend to.

And I’m not slighting Hawley, I love those types of stories. But yeah let’s not kid ourselves when you have done nearly 800 hours of any franchise, you’re probably not breaking any major new ground on anything at this point.

It’s probably why Discovery is 1000 years into the future, to do something radically different with it that hasn’t been done with every other show.

Why SMG said she was the first person of color to lead a Star Trek show….

Missed a few words in my OP. ;)

Why not do both films? Noah’s film @ $100 M and Kelvin Trek film $150 M. Just don’t release them at the same time. Space them at least six months apart so they don’t interfere with the box office potential of both. :)

Because they probably don’t have the money to do both films. Paramount is not Disney, it’s not overflowing with money these days and have to choose their projects more carefully.

And sadly the Kelvin movies has never been big money makers for the studio, hence why they tried to get Pine to lower his asking price to even make the next one.

Then if that is the case I don’t think that I would roll the dice on Hawley’s film with a new cast and characters that an audience will spend a portion of the film getting to know all of them. Better to use the existing cast in a well written script. Maybe Paramount could get Hawley to change his mind on his cast and use known characters. I really don’t like the plot of his movie but there are not a lot of original ideas left to use. Most have been tried
before. If they are trying to copy the Marvel or Star Wars movies, then they need to use MCU and Star Wars movie concepts. Create interlocking plots with different main characters and have a successful cliffhanger to tie them all together similar to what was done for TWOK, TSFS and TVH. These were probably the most successful Star Trek movies ever made.

This has been said over and over again. The problem seems to be the Kelvin cast is just getting too expensive or they would’ve just paid Pine what they were suppose to pay him two years ago. That seems to be the issue, they want a cheaper film but probably feel they can’t do it with the current cast, especially if Pine isn’t willing to take a pay cut (I don’t blame him for not wanting to) so this is probably the alternative.

If Beyond didn’t bomb, then we probably would’ve had another film by now. But that film just changed everything and they are clearly worried the results could still be the same.

So they are just trying to go another way because they probably worried the next film can do as bad. If they can make it cheaper then they might be willing to roll the dice.

And you’re right, Star Trek 2-4 were some of the most successful films. They were also the cheapest Trek films ever made as well. The Kelvin films are the most expensive by a huge margin and yet the ROI is nowhere close to the early TOS films so they are probably trying to find a middle ground.

Maturity of the human species. Why can’t STAR TREK be about the maturity of the
human species anymore?

I’m not sure many of the cinematic features were about that, unfortunately.

The Voyage Home stands out in that regard, and in it’s own way so does the Undiscovered Country. I think that The Motion Picture was supposed to be about that in part, but it got lost in the swirl of V’ger.