After months of no news, a report arrived Thursday afternoon regarding the next steps for the Star Trek feature films. Paramount Pictures is apparently looking for a new take from a screenwriter who has some experience with the franchise.
Kalinda Vazquez penning Star Trek script
The news comes from Deadline in an exclusive report that Paramount Pictures has tapped Kalinda Vazquez to write a script for “an original movie that she hatched.” According to the report, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot is producing for the project. Even though Abrams has signed a new deal with Warner Brothers, he and Bad Robot have continued their relationship with Paramount, including producing two upcoming Mission: Impossible films and an upcoming Cloverfield sequel.
Fans may recognize Vazquez’s name as she joined Star Trek: Discovery as a consulting producer in season three and wrote the teleplay for the episode “Terra Firma, Part 2.” She also wrote the Short Treks episode “Ask Not.” It can also be said that Star Trek has been part of her entire life as she was named for the character Kelinda (a Kelvan) from the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “By Any Other Name.” Before joining Discovery, Vazquez worked as a writer and producer on a number of series including Fear the Walking Dead, Once Upon a Time, Prison Break, and Nikita. Vazquez was recently tapped to collaborate with George R.R. Martin for the HBO time travel series Roadmarks which she will be executive producing and showrunning.
This would be her first feature film project and would make her the first woman ever to write a Star Trek movie. Discovery showrunner Michelle Paradise congratulated Vazquez on Twitter.
CONGRATULATIONS @KalindaVazquez!!!!!!!!! So excited to see this one day (hopefully sooner than later!). 🖖 https://t.co/zelReYTeVn
— Michelle Paradise (@michelleparadis) March 4, 2021
No word yet on casting, plot, a director, or how the film ties into the Star Trek Universe.
This would be the fourth script Paramount has commissioned since Star Trek Beyond in 2016. Other projects that have been in development include a direct sequel to Beyond with Chris Hemsworth returning as George Kirk, an R-rated Trek film based on an idea from Quentin Tarrantino, and a new take on Trek from writer/director Noah Hawley.
As of last summer, all of those projects were said to be on hold as Paramount’s new head of motion pictures Emma Watts considered where to go next with the franchise. This new script could indicate she has decided to put all those other projects behind and move in a new direction.
Find more news and analysis on upcoming Star Trek feature films.
Hard to get excited for silver screen treks these days as they never seem to garner any traction :-(
I am reserving judgment until I hear who the producers and director(s) are. I never really cared if they gained traction, only if they were good.
I think apc means that this is at least the fourth Star Trek movie project that has been announced since Beyond came out five years ago, and none of them have happened.
To that I would say this is more likely to lead to something now that Paramount and CBS are one entity. That said, the fact that this is just an announcement of a writer is indeed nothing to get excited about. Lots of projects (Trek and non-Trek) get writers to pen a script, and never happen.
It’s important to note though that it’s a writer from the show, which I think gives it a better chance to succeed. When you’ve got a big name producer like a Tarantino, it’s going to be a lot more complicated.
Clearly this writer has already given her pitch and/or a full treatment, and the studio is on-board.
My excitement though, like I said, won’t begin until I hear that Kurtzman is NOT the exec producer, or I hear that a really respectable director is on board.
I really liked Beyond, I just wish that had been the FIRST of the three, then we could have gotten a really good series of films.
Salt vampire is correct, thank you
No, thanks.
“No, thanks”…. for what? That was vague. No thanks for a movie? No thanks for her as the writer? No thanks to a woman writing a Trek film? This article says absolutely no details about the project, so what exactly turns you off about it?
Oh yeah, for sure that… /s
I consider the Kelvin timeline movies to be mediocre at best, and I find Discovery’s writing to be one of it’s weakest points. So having a new movie written by a Discovery writer and produced by Bad Robot does not inspire me with any confidence or interest. I would prefer a new team entirely, and perhaps a more experienced screenwriter (though I don’t know any of her other work outside of Trek).
Yep, The Kelvin/Discovery melding, that’s The Worst of Both Worlds (and I thought things were bad when Berman ran things!)
It’s seems bizarre to me how many fans feel threatened by leaving the Kelvin timeline alone and keep insisting for this weird Prime-Kelvin integration idea?
Just let it be. My brain can handle it being separate.
‘No thanks to a woman writing a Trek film’
What???
No thanks to anyone writing for Discovery. The shows is a mess as Star Trek 5 and everyone writing for it I don’t trust to write anything good.
“No thanks to a woman writing a Trek film”
You exist just to look for trouble don’t you. Pathetic
Thanks for sharing. I’m all refreshed and challenged by your unique point of view.
Deep thoughts.
I’m def excited about this one! 🖖
Something new on the big screen has to have a hook that will appeal to a broader audience (and very likely a-list talent as well). If not this thing will end up on Paramount+.
What’s a big screen? Asking for a friend.
I’ve heard about those… I think I’ve seen them in the historical documents from the before time. The time before we entered the Twilight Zone, the time when people could intermingle.
A largely extinct form of communal movie watching experience, noted for its poorly lit screens, painfully loud audio, sticky floors, dirty seats, obsession with concessions and noisy people who would do everything but actually watch said movie. It was largely abandoned in the early 21st century after a worldwide calamity forced people to realize what a flawed experience it really was.
Hey TonyD, good to hear from you again.
I’5 add that they were also often smelly as the sticky food collected around chairs and rotted.
Thanks TG47. I still lurk around here, just don’t have much to say these days as I don’t watch any of the Kurtztrek shows.
And yes, how could I forget the unmistakable aromaic mix of synthetic popcorn butter and god knows what else wafting through the theater. In fairness, I’m sure it’s a better experience at smaller theaters. Sadly, all that was available in my area were the large 20 screen cineplexes (one of which actually closed permanently due to the pandemic).
I’m pretty sure after they UV sanitize the room nowadays, no rotting occurs. This is not to say that the aroma of UV cooked foodstuffs approaches anything that one would regard as pleasant.
Large, woven mesh doors you pull down over your garage to keep bugs out of your house?
Or….squirrel nets for fruit trees?
What else could they possibly be?
Won’t be holding my breath waiting on this one to start production…
I love that she was actually named after a Trek character. Her parents must be stoked – I assume they are super geeks like me, I named my kids Red Shirt #3 and Forehead Appliance.
Where’s the like button or the +1 or…
Red Shirt #3 sounds more Seussical to me. For that matter, so does Forehead Appliance …
Here we go again lol!
I can’t blame people and their cynicism. Maybe they should just wait and announce a film is being made after first month of filming is done and then we can actually start to believe it will happen this time. ;)
But hey, something to talk about until it’s canceled and put on the shelf with the others. But maybe this will have more traction since they are now doing something we haven’t seen since the TNG films and pulling someone from one of the shows to be involved. It also suggest it may take place in the prime universe again and be a direct tie in to the shows….or maybe not.
I would love it if it was a completely new cast and characters though. Don’t care about the time period. I think they moved on from the Kelvin cast at this point (and saying ‘original’ implies something completely new). And what I loved about Hawley’s script is that it would have brand new characters. I’m hoping they are sticking to that idea here as well IF it’s not built around the Kelvin cast.
What if the Michelle Yeoh vehicle is a movie rather than a streaming series?
That actually would kind of fit the current situation — good possible deduction!
Don’t make me throw up in my mouth man.
What if it was both? There’s a complicated backstory that the casual movie going audience would need to be brought up to speed on so I personally don’t think it would be straightforward to switch the S:31 project to the big screen. Hypothetically speaking though if they did want to cash in on Yeoh’s international pull and put out a cinematic advertisement for their streaming platform they could put out a Prime Georgiou movie that would essentially serve as a prequel for the Kurtzman led shows as well as generate more interest in a future Section 31 series.
To the extent that Paramount has commissioned a script, that’s great. It also means that all Paramount has done is commissioned a script. If they can’t sell it to investors, then all they have….is a script. At the moment, there’s nothing to see here.
Technically, Paramount is also the investor unless they opt to let Skydance et al co-finance. So really, they just have to convince Emma Watts it is a moneymaker.
Paramount doesn’t have two dimes to rub together. If they show whatever this is to investors a year from now (or however much longer it takes to get this penned), and the response is “Are you nuts?”, then we all go back into a holding pattern. This is our fourth lap around the track now, and the three other scripts all got filed because no one was willing to put their money where their mouths were.
That’s not quite how a big movie studio with its own pocketbook works, but they have been highly cautious about where to go next, that’s true.
Phil is correct that Paramount will require at least one third party to help finance the film. The last time out, “Beyond” opened with title cards for Paramount, Skydance, Alibaba, Huahua and Bad Robot Paramount’s pockets aren’t quite as deep as Disney, Universal or Warner Bros.
Actually, they don’t require it, they bring on partners for the riskier projects and offer up some stakes in their premier material like M:I and Trek as collateral. Paramount is risk-averse, has been for decades. It’s nothing to do with ViacomCBS not having the money when called upon.
That was perfected in the Lansing era. Brad Grey dismantled it, which is what led to the money hemorrhaging, that emptied the pocketbooks.
Lansing was a shrewd businesswoman (the Titanic deal was baller), but by the end of her reign Paramount had a reputation for not being talent-friendly and for being too stingy. Grey’s tenure started off well-enough and he managed to sustain good fruitful relationships with Plan B, Scorsese, Hasbro, Tom Cruise and Bad Robot, and they got good initial mileage out of the DreamWorks and Marvel relationships. Loosening the purse strings helped initially, they just didn’t maintain high standards for projects.
Paramount’s non-existent pocketbook is why it remerged w/CBS. It may eventually gain access to CBS’ pocketbook but, for now, until the dust settles, it’s an uphill battle for them to sell CBS on the notion that any movie project ideas, that they propose, aren’t as bankrupt as the ones that got them back there, in the first place.
And Viacom’s CEO is in charge of it all. CBS’ executives have been exiting, at Shari Redstone’s insistence. At the end of the day, the money all comes from one pooled resource, post-merger. They are cautious about investment as Paramount is on wobbly ground along with the rest of the field, especially during the pandemic, and they learned long ago to successfully partner with other companies to share risks. But the notion that they can’t even fund a movie without a co-financier is incorrect, that’s all.
“Having a portfolio approach to investing in motion pictures, where you own a few at 100% and you take on third-party investment with others, helps level out the ebbs and flows of performance. It would not be unreasonable to see studios and other production companies entering into similar multi-picture deals, especially when, in the current economic climate, investing in [film] assets could be appealing to third-party investors.” – Andrew Gumpert, chief operating officer, Paramount Pictures, Sept. 2020.
Yes but remember, this infusion, needed to proceed:
“Viacom is currently holding $12 Billion in debt and so Paramount really needs that $1 Billion in Chinese money just to keep its current development state moving forward.” PARAMOUNT HIRES JIM GIANOPULOS AS NEW CEO; by A Pascal; March 27, 2017, trekmovie.com
never materialized.
That was three years ago. After that fell through, they secured funding from Hasbro, Sega and Skydance and re-merged with CBS, with Bakish in charge. It doesn’t change the underlying situation – Paramount/ViacomCBS can still choose to go it alone on multiple big budget film projects, but it uses them as collateral. Tent pole films like Star Trek are not the ones they need to convince investment partners to help them finance, they are the carrots by which they get investors to help them with riskier propositions like World War Z, Gemini Man, Annihilation, Baywatch or Ghost in the Shell. Meanwhile it covers the entire budget for films like Arrival and A Quiet Place 2. Risk is spread and Paramount gets to continue its tradition of not spending too heavily on anything and doesn’t flounder, but with its rewards for the likes of Trek, Top Gun, and M:I tempered.
The point was you told Phil that’s not how it works when Paramount has an empty pocketbook, i.e. implying that Paramount can always finance the capital by their lone independent selves to move their production slate forward. I cited when they couldn’t, and then you disproved your own point, citing Skydance, Hasbro and Sega.
In the interrum, CBS’ CFO has approached Paramount more as just another one of its investors, like the ones you enumerated and Phil referenced. Where we disagree is that I believe that what remains of the winning CBS financial watchdog isn’t going to just rubberstamp Paramount”s tap on its deep pocketbook using Grey’s old bankrupt, or perhaps it would be more accurate to describe them as corrupt, production practices. I just think as things stand, even with hats changing as you cited, Paramount has to go an extra mile more to procure the financing for a Trek movie production, than the Television division does for a series.
Paramount can finance its own movies and has done so. It simply doesn’t do it all the time. Again, Trek was clearly used as an enticement for investors to cover risky bets, whereas Phil implied Paramount needed to beg investors to fund a future Trek film. That has never been the case. And I don’t see any evidence to the contrary, especially now that it is overly ViacomCBS’ most important brand.
Trek is in the same boat as Mission: Impossible – Paramount would prefer to go it alone and reap all the rewards, but they needed surer bets to assuage their partners.
I was waiting for you to show up Phil lol. You been right for about 4 straight years now, so I’m not going to overthink it too much either. I just don’t understand why they do this over and over again???? Why announce anything until you decided you want to actually make the freakin movie first???
I think many people have forgotten this but when the first Kelvin film was announced and Abrams was attached to direct, there was no script! They only had the concept they pitched to the studio but were completely devoted to it anyway and threw everything at it. That’s how it is for practically every major IP now. Marvel comes up with a movie title, just throw the opening dates out, hires the actors and figure out everything else later.
So yeah, sadly, I think Beyond really burned them because honestly until that failed, most of the movies were basically done like the shows; they decide to make one, announce it and then someone starts to write the pilot for it well after that. But now, it’s just waiting to see someone write something first before agreeing to anything. And three straight times now, they haven’t been happy enough. Maybe this will be different though, but they clearly don’t seem remotely confident in the movie series anymore…at least not like the old days.
Studios commission scripts all the time – but we are also into the post coronavirus, emergence of streaming world. JJ, or anyone else, isn’t going to get greenlit for 200MM just because they have a concept, in the traditional sense.
Considering Ms. Vasquez background, I’d be shocked if this isn’t ending up as a story that leverages CBS/Paramounts considerable investment in streaming and the current infrastructure for the streaming Trek shows. Trekmovie commenting on there being “No word yet on casting, plot, a director, or how the film ties into the Star Trek Universe” is an incredible jumping to conclusions moment. This baby hasn’t even started two crawl yet, but it’s being spoken of as it just ran the 40 yard dash to Olympic glory.
I suspect we may still be having this conversation a couple years from now….
Yes I know studios commision scripts all the time, but that’s what I’m saying, they don’t give them all press releases either. Most of the time, we never hear a movie is happening at all until someone write a script and a studio decides to make it. But with Star Trek these days, we’re constantly getting these big announcements and they fall flat over and over again. I guess I can understand people like Tarantino and even Hawley, because they are big names and people associate their work with strong movies and shows.
But you should tell yourself maybe it’s best to just let this woman work and make the script before letting the world know about it. Now there will be all this attention on something that will most likely not get pass the script phase. I hate to sound so negative but obviously it’s for a reason lol.
Love to be proven wrong as I’m sure you would. And maybe things ARE different and they are tying it closer to the shows like the old days, so it gives them more drive to do it now. That was always the issue with the Kelvin movies. They always felt very standalone. When they were a hit, it didn’t matter much. But once Beyond didn’t do that great, they couldn’t find ways to cross it over to other stuff in the franchise without it feeling forced and they already lost Nimoy.
So maybe this will be something that will get a crossover happening (and most likely much cheaper).
I don’t think Paramount made a big press release announcing Vazquez is writing the next Trek movie. You may notice that there is not a single quote from anyone at Paramount or Bad Robot in that Deadline article.
Basically, Deadline may have received a tip from an insider that Vazquez is developing a script and they decided to run a story about it even though there isn’t really anything to report. The simple reason for that is because Trek is reasonably popular so any Trek-related story is going to bring them clicks.
And of course, Trekmovie took up that (non-)story because many fans are waiting anxiously for any movie news. It’s not a slight against Trekmovie but they need clicks too.
For decades, DEADLINE has served as a defacto publicity arm for Paramount heads. Their Paramount sources are not mailroom know-nothings.
For research, into the answer to your question “How does Paramount make money from announcing scripts that they never produce?” I task you with watching Mel Brooks’ THE PRODUCERS, both musical and non-musical versions.
Having worked for an entity which shall remain nameless, you are 100% correct, sir. I can see Bob Bakish saying, “Ya’ know, I think we can still make a buck in theaters with this franchise but maybe the Tarantino script is still the way to go if we want go big and show people that we’re serious. We’ll take the Vasquez story to Plus.”
“Beyond” didn’t “fail,” it made almost as much as the first two Kelvin movies. The problem was the escalating costs, and the fact that Paramount wanted Star Wars numbers at the box office. Beyond was Paramount’s biggest film that year, and it showed a profit.
They took overseas grosses for granted. Into Darkness did well overseas, but apart from China, Beyond underperformed and they didn’t do as big a publicity tour, either. 50th Anniverary of Trek was a bit of a damp squib, especially compared to the 30th which had a movie and 2 strong series airing to boost the fanfare.
It is crazy what a difference the 30th anniversary and the 50th anniversary was like. For the 30th, Star Trek was already everywhere thanks to DS9 and VOY airing every week and First Contact felt like a huge bonafide Star Trek adventure that got fans excited with the Borg showing up again. That year the 30th got all kinds of publicity with not only the movie coming out, both DS9 and VOY doing special episodes to honor TOS and even a huge 2 hour TV special that brought all the casts together to honor it. It’s actually on Youtube now.
The 50th anniversary however showed up and all there was was a 2 minute clip that played on Youtube and having Beyond out which was already a PR mess including it’s lackluster advertising which literally went out of it’s way to ignore the fact Star Trek was indeed having a 50th anniversary.
It would’ve been nice for the 55th anniversary Paramount could’ve gotten itself together and got another movie out this year along with the new shows. They certainly didn’t have a lack of scripts to shoot lol.
Only it didn’t Raymond!
Beyond made $40 million less than the 09 movie, but same time it cost $35 million more than that one.
Also, it literally made $100 million less in America than the first film did as well…even though ticket prices were up, it was playing in 3D (which the first one never did) and in more theaters to boot. And it’s not hard to guess where Star Trek’s biggest market is located.
It made $120 million less than STID and only cost $5 million less than that movie did, at least on paper.
And on top of all of that, Beyond was the first film to lose nearly 60% in its second week B.O. total in America. It lost 59%. Both the 09 film and STID both lost under 50% in their second weeks. It’s very odd, people talk about how STID was hated and Beyond was more appreciated but looking at the week to week drops you would think it was the opposite. I use to point this out all the time, always to dead silence lol. But it told you the so-called word of mouth didn’t help Beyond at all.
You’re right on one thing though and Beyond was Paramount’s biggest film that year. But what you’re leaving out it was also it’s most expensive as well.
Look, you can spin reality all you want. But what I just wrote is actual reality. If Beyond just made what the first film made, even if it still cost more, the fourth film probably would’ve been out at least 2 years ago already. The fact is that they didn’t even want to pay Pine what they promised him and nearly 5 years later the Kelvin cast has seem to have been tossed aside after just three films tells you those films probably achieved what they wanted. And Beyond simply nailed the coffin faster.
Beyond failed because it simply lost money! There is no other way to spin it.
Mission Impossible has been wildly successful for both Paramount and Bad Robot. I have no idea why Star Trek fizzled. I’d like to know why they lost faith in what the creatives were doing, the people who made the first two reboots and brought in the guy from Fast and Furious movies. It seems unwarranted and unnecessary meddling. Imagine being fired for writing a Star Trek script because it was too Star Trekky.
i think JJ hopping over to SW had something to do with it all..had he not been poached by Disney hed have probably directed ST3 (which wouldve most likely been the Orci/Shatner script) as thats what directors were seemingly doing like Raimi/Nolan in completing their trilogies
Someone with TREK TV writing experience writing a TREK feature…we’ve not had that since the 1990’s – and guess what 2 of the 3 films weren’t bad…
Both Generations and Insurrection were mostly hampered by having way too many cooks in the kitchen. The one film that was a runaway success was First Contact and that’s because the studio gave them complete freedom to make whatever they wanted (but still had some demands).
It doesn’t mean Generations or Insurrection would’ve been amazing films, but probably better at least. I thought Michael Piller’s original idea for Insurrection just sounded WAY better, but yeah.
For the record, I liked all those films, but GEN and INS are definitely on the weaker side overall.
I think Generations was done-in by not having enough time for at least one more polish of the script. It badly needed one, but moronic Paramount insisted that the movie be in theaters five months after All Good Things… and that just was a recipe for disaster. They tried to fix Kirk’s death scene, but that wasn’t enough, the whole final act needed a re-write. So did Picard’s Nexus life, which made no sense at all (it really should have been Famke Jansen’s Karmala in that world with him, or at least Nella Darren or Vash, not that awful Charles Dickens Christmas family.) Pushing Generations to Summer 1995 would have given them plenty of time to fix the script enough that Nimoy would have signed-on, and time to update the Enterprise-D sets so that they didn’t have to make everything so dark to hide the aging, worn-out consoles and carpet.
“not that awful Charles Dickens Christmas family”
THAT scene is the single most important scene to me in the entire Star Trek franchise, the one scene I hold dearest, because it reminds me of the days of Christmas Past. It was probably the last Christmas I had as a “child” back then. I got a computer, a Generations CD-ROM with my very first trailers (years before the internet) and some GEN bed sheets. All my family was still together back in those days.
My dad died five years ago, ironically three days after Christmas. I recently lost my mum after having been in an elderly’s resort for seven years. And what makes it even worse: I lost my childhood home only weeks ago
All I’ve got left is memories of those days and those days are directly reflected in that single Nexus scene because the release of that movie and that particular Christmas of 1994 are directly related… through those GEN bed sheets, through that 1993 UK trailer that made me a fan on that CD-ROM I got in 1994…
This is why I love GEN and that scene in particular…
I’m glad that scene means something more for you, but I’ve always thought that Nexus scene fell out of some other movie about some other character. Absolutely nothing we’d known about Picard until that point suggested he wanted to live a fantasy life as Bob Cratchit.
maybe Generations is actually set in December and that’s why Picard is feeling festive in the nexus? (lamenting the lack of family at that time of year,, in the depths of space..and having just lost his remaining relatives )
Imagine that Scene in Star Trek With an old Computer and a CD Rom drive
thank you for sharing
i too really like the Christmas or ‘Nexmas’ fantasy scene of Picards.. i particulaly the xmas baubles that alert/remind him of where he is and whats happened.. almost a twilight zone vibe in those scenes especially when he looks out the window. it also taps into Patricks real life love of A Christmas Carol (no doubt the scene was influenced by his interest in that) and having seen him perform his one man play in London (at christmas) takes on an even greater resonance for me.
Kirks scenes (again possibly influenced by Shatners interests) weren’t so great imo.. id have preferred it had Picard appeared in kirks Star Trek II/III apartment (complete with Towering Inferno backdrop) so to at least offer a nice continuity with the best of the previous films.. and the instead of the horse-riding perhaps a visit to the 1701 A bridge or maybe even the streets of 1930s NYC with Edith (1994 era Joan Collins) that is if Harlan wouldve ever permitted the use of the Edith character
1 out of 3. Insurrection was just boring and lame, and that Picard love interest thing was just so bad with no chemistry and bad writing. I actually respect the attempt on Nemesis more because it was bold, even if it failed spectacularly.
INSURRECTION, played as a television episode blown up for the big screen, which did not bother me that much. What annoyed me was that, for years, the series had Picard pontificating to Q, and any one else that would listen, on how the Federation had learned how dangerously corrupting the temption of immortality was, and that they were immune to it – but there they were, on the big screen, corrupted by immortality’s temptation!
Pretty sure this ONE will be the one to actually move ahead and get made.
Since Vasquez was on DSC, and with Michelle Paradise congratulating her, looks like Kurtzman has become the supreme overload of the Trek universe now that the Paramount/Viacom/CBS merger has happened.
Emma Watts has made her decision where Trek films are heading.
I’ve got no major issues with Kurtzman, I admire his ambition for Trek in creating multiple shows that caters to different tastes and generations (even though his execution can be off). Fortunately for me, I enjoy all of them.
Some of us are still waiting for Kurtzman to make a Star Trek show. He’s made it clear he wishes for Star Trek to be like everything else except Star Trek, and IMO, when someone gives an interview saying they imagined Star Trek to be more like that other big sci-fi franchise… they shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near it.
Tough luck I guess
What an amazingly shitty answer.
The truth often is son.
Quit pretending you’re Peter Weller, joker, yours clearly don’t clank like Robocop’s.
So precious my dear boy lol
Excellent post, Trellium. Spot on.
The key word from Emma Watts is “curated.”
They understand that the Trek IP is valuable and they want to manage how it’s used, not let some creative indulge their ego to make their mark by redefining or burning up value.
I’ve been crossing fingers so long- I’ve given myself arthritis.
Interested. Engaged. Not sure why Bad Robot would produce. They don’t know anything about Star Trek. And frankly, JJ Abrams is entirely overrated and entirely medicore.
Bad Robot has a good track record for producing hits, regardless of whether Abrams directs. If I was Paramount, I’d be furious with him for how he undermined their deal, but it makes some sense to keep them involved in the IP they nurtured together.
I would have zero interest if it features new characters…It was a huge mistake to not make Tarantino’s film. A master filmmaker like Tarantino would have delivered an interesting film and just as importantly given the film a lot of positive momentum in the general public’s eye.
Why do people like you even bother reading this site? It’s for fans.
Fans are allowed to criticize the things that interest them. It’s not a zero sum game.
When it comes to Star Trek, you can tell the fans because they are the ones bitching the loudest about everything. :D
Frankly I think this movie is doomed to be a box office flop if it isn’t connected to anything fans recognize. That doesn’t mean it won’t be good, but that isn’t what determines box office success, especially with the whole theatrical business in a precarious state.
I never said or implied otherwise.
You implied he wasn’t a fan for having that opinion.
Please stop the gatekeeping.
Exactly, AllenWrench.
Jeez, what’s your problem? That dude just wanted a Tarantino treatment of Star Trek, and I would have liked that too. And we are not the only ones. Why be such a jerk given you just disagree?
I’m confused. Are you telling VOODO this site is for fans of Bad Robot and its employees or the wide spectrum that is STAR TREK?
A. Tarantino himself decided he didn’t want to do it.
B. If everything that has been said about the script is true, then it’s probably best they moved on since it just sounded like something hardcore TOS fans are interested in and very little else.
C. I just don’t understand how Star Trek fans will watch a dozen shows of new characters but only want the movies to be characters we already know? I don’t understand it at all. So if the movie star Discovery or Picard characters, you would be more inclined to see it?
Re: C
That’s simply because, in all their corporate incarnations, Paramount Pictures has been lousy at curating and maintaining the various new interesting Trek characters that their films have produced to date.
Part of the time was because they were only a derivative copyright holder and the Primary didn’t seem interested in such.
Outside of that, Saavik was probably the most interesting created while retaining Primary copyrights and yet, Paramount allowed the character to undergo essentially 3 incarnations and be stripped of her most promising charactetistics in each of the reinventions.
Most of Paramount’s other interesting new characters seemed to be sacrificial lambs.
One exception that comes to mind is Carol Marcus but, again, Paramount gave her two different swings with the incarnation bat and both times went nowhere with her after showing great promise.
Keenser’s been around for three pictures but has had no more character development than a tribble.
Oh, and do we honestly expect to see Jaylah in this next script?
I’d rather see something from Cronenberg.
Me too, and I am actually amazed no one is thinking about this since Cronenberg himself is part of the franchise now. I wonder if anyone asked him to do a film and he rejected.
Maybe he’ll be asked to direct this one
I too mourn the loss of Tarantino Trek. I get the feeling wed have had something akin to City on the Edge meets Yesterdays Enterprise with the JJ cast and Shatner. and steeped in TOS imagery (& the movies I-VI) a nostalgia/deconstructive homage like his previous films with their respective genres
According to the rumors, he wanted to remake A Piece of the Action with the Kelvin cast. Again, may not be true, but no one has denied either. If so, definitely hard pass from me. Movies are made, what, every 2-5 years at this point, do something original with them. We don’t need more nostalgia bait, that’s what got us STID.
If it’s going to be Guardian of Forever or any kind of time-travel across the universe, the concept from this writer is much more likely to line up.
It also sounds more like a Yeoh vehicle. The 2-parter in Discovery S3 actually let us see some of her range as a big screen actor.
It makes sense and could bring movie goers to the franchise, and customers to streaming.
Imo its more likely to have been based on COTEF as thats the episode he was raving about on that podcast interview he did (along with YE). City was also set around the same era as the news articles were saying when they were speculating it’d a Piece of the Action remake, and could tie in more with Yesterdays Ent due to time travel/alt realities I guess, idk though just pure speculation based on that podcast he did. we need an IDW adaptation along with all the other ST4s!
STID was nostalgia playing on the most famous and prototypical Trek feature film. A riff on Piece of the Action plays off one of the most obscure and forgotten corners of TOS.
As for being original, it’s all about execution. Gangster films were already a thing before Tarantino. Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction are Tarantino takes on the gangster film and were widely hailed as breakthroughs. For about three years, every other film in the cinema had some garrolous criminal revealing his secret amusements before getting down to the violence.
There are no guarantees in life but I would wager real money that Tarantino’s idea would not have been a remake of Piece of the Action but use the idea of parallel earth evolution and the unintended consequences of Federation meddling to his own, different take. Or else why would he have wanted to do it?
Tarantino clearly loves genre and wants to play in the sandbox. It’s verging on criminal that this prospect got binned.
Clearly the studio wasn’t in love with Tarantino idea because they can still get someone else to make it even if he doesn’t direct it. And the fact they got two other writers after they commissioned his script tells you everything. They wrote it four years ago already, clearly they wasn’t in love with it and literally moved on.
And sorry, I just don’t care to remake a Star Trek episode into a big screen feature, no matter who is making it. Maybe it wasn’t A Piece of the Action. But if it’s any remake, it’s just feels so lazy and uninspired to me. Come up with your own story, not just piggyback on what someone else did 50 years ago. Luckily the studio felt the same way. Do something ORIGINAL!!! Leave stuff like that for an episode of Discovery or Picard.
Funny thing in the announcement for this movie, they literally used the word ‘original’ so I’m expecting that really means something beyond just new characters.
My understanding was the actual violence of the Chicago ’20s mobs was anyhthing but the sanitized version in PIECE, and Tarantino wanted to show the true horror wrought by the cultural contamination while weaving in the philosophical and comedic elements that he’s often able to do in what others often dismiss as “gorefests.”
I’m not holding my breath, but it would be nice to get Trek on the silver screen again. New characters/old characters recast I don’t care as long as the story and the writing are good.🤞
Well, at least something is happening.
IMDB says she has 10 writing credits for television. I hope she is ready for the big screen. Perhaps this is for a straight to streaming “movie” for Paramount+?
I won’t be holding my breath until things start to solidify.
That wouldn’t be a bad idea. Use Paramount+ as the testing ground to see if the new characters and premise of this movie – whatever they are – gain traction. There are millions of Trekkies on the site now, so it wouldn’t take much to get them to sample it. If it’s a misfire then move on. If it’s a big hit, that’s something to build on for a legit big screen movie, where the stakes are higher and getting an audience is harder.
I don’t think Paramount+ is a big enough platform to launch anything that could become theatrical. They are letting the second wind they got from the Kelvin films ebb away to nothing if they end with Beyond. It is such a dicey proposal to do an entirely new venture that’s not a reboot.
Actually I don’t think it would be that hard. They are spending of around $100 million to make Discovery every season. Picard probably in the same ballpark, but may be lower with less episodes. It doesn’t have to be a $150 million movie, but a $70-90 million film, that’s probably feasible at least.
I’m saying I don’t think Paramount+ is popular enough to launch something, sorry for not being clear. It’s still a niche service.
And if you mean them making a TV movie on the service, can’t see them doing anything but full on TV shows and mini series on Paramount+, they get more bang for their buck.
OK, I understand and agree!
I had wondered after Bad Robot made their Warner deal if they wouldn’t be involved in Trek or M:I anymore, but it seems that they still will be.
I hope this project actually makes it off the ground, I was disappointed the Beyond sequel fell apart but looking forward to more Star Trek regardless.
I much prefer TV Trek to movie Trek, but having a Trek writer named after a TOS character is really very cool.
Best of luck, Kalinda! Just don’t get turned into a dodecahedron. :-)
Writing Star Trek movie scripts these days is like being a Red Shirt on TOS. Good luck to her…
YES ENTRRPRISE C FILMCONFIRMED
Ummmm…no, it’s not.
Just watch, this will be the start of a great series of movies, and after each movie is released, the same 20 people here who criticize everything new in Star Trek will insist the movie is not making money…meanwhile they green light the next one. LOL
Inevitably, but regrettably so.
If there’s EVER a great series of movies, a decent hunk of us with taste and standards will doubtless have died or evolved beyond the need to post on these fourms, so it won’t be the SAME 20 people, it’ll just be other people expressing a dissenting viewpoint.
Gatekeeping the realm of good taste in artistic expression, are you? It must just suck for you to have to dirty yourself wading into the masses of Neanderthal’s , day in and day out.
I’d gatekeep over REAL issues, like making sure people aren’t going unmasked at my workplace or near my home, not over this stuff. As to what must just suck, you’re just making it too easy for me to reference the showrunner’s story sense.
If you’re really hung up about my standards, I might suggest you spend for a copy of Harlan Ellison’s THE GLASS TEAT, a book of commentary on TV that, while over 50 years old, is still stunningly relevant. There are some columns near the back on ‘the common man’ and boy they are something. His notion is that the common man is mired in racist and selfish and self-destructive behavior and other of the lesser aspects of human nature, and that we should be looking for inspiration and action from the uncommon man. I heartily agree.
Bad Robot + Disco writer + movie landscape of impending multiverse superheroes = Kelvin/Prime time travel/multiverse movie!
Yep, but whatever direction they decide to go in, just make sure it’s overseen by the guy who gave us The Rise of Skywalker. Abrams has enough of a track record now so we know that 1) he is smart, 2) he is strong, 3) he looks for things that he needs, 4) he is nothing if not persistent, 5) he knows that teeth are for chewing. I have heard some say that The Rise of Skywalker is stupider than Battlefield Earth, but actually it is smart, and it is strong.
To each their own, but I hated that movie more than almost any I have ever seen.
Oh god, it’s the worst Star Wars movie. Abrams was totally out of his depth.
It was better than The Last Jedi at least. Probably The Phantom Menace too. But yeah, it isn’t very good.
I don’t like TLJ, but it was trying to do something new at least, and it was worse to try to retcon so much of it than lean into the possibilities it offered up.
But Luke’s storyline wasn’t satisfying, nor was any of Finn’s apart from meeting Rose.
Phantom Menace… it’s stodgy at times and embarrassing at others, but it does have some great set pieces in the pod racing and final battles. Some excellent world building there, just also some Jar Jar and kiddie Anakin letting the side down. I still feel for those actors.
He’s pulling a pakled on you!
I thought TROS was actually pretty good and had some interesting stuff, Palpatines back? Fine by me!
It had way too much “fix the disaster that was The Last Jedi” to do to really be a good movie. Especially the first half-hour, which seemed to me like a whiplash-inducing string of 15 two-minute scenes. They did the best they could, but the hole was just too deep.
Sorry, LJ was fine, it was RoS that was the car crash.
TLJ was fine when it turned Luke Skywalker into a whimpy, whiney hermit? Ugh.
I’m with Tony… a lot of people really expected one thing from Luke, and that was the archetypal Jedi Hero. When they didn’t get that, they lost their minds. Sorry… life does that. It’s NEVER what you expect and TLJ fits just fine within that ideal. Having said that, TLJ was a little sterile for my taste, lacking a lot of the magic and sense of wonder of past Star Wars outings.
ROS brought back the sense of wonder, but sacrificed originality. It was a hot mess that hit all of the right notes for the fans.
If people didn’t like Luke as a hermit who had run away from everything, why do they blame Rian/TLJ instead of JJ/TFA? JJ was the one who set up that storyline, Rian just continued it. What was Rian supposed to do at that point?
I’ve been rewatching Discovery season 1 and gosh the show is so cinematic and has such a huge budget that I think a “old fashioned ” movie is redundant. What possibly more could they do with an even larger budget? Blow up the Enterprise for the 20th time again?
Afford Shatners $5 million fee
How do you define ‘cinematic?’ Dirty windshields on spaceships and a vacuum of space that is anything but, and tinted blue with fuzzy ill-defined ships that have less substantial presence than pretty much everything that has gone before? Or the crazed editing? Or the overproduced yet somehow under-credible sets, like that pipe organ looking Emperor’s throne room. REwatch it? Barely got through it the first time for free!
More specifically to your point: deliver VFX that look credible, not low-rez. Quit treating audiences like ADD folk who tap out if a well-composed shot lasts more than 2 seconds before cutting. Involve filmmakers with an actual vision, instead of folks who just burn a lot of footage so somebody else has to try to shape a bunch of nothing into something that, if they work real hard and get lucky, will almost play.
Gee, I dunno the “look” of the show works for me. Granted, you are right about the crazed editing and also I’ll add they overuse the spinning camera technique which makes me physically ill to watch. I consider myself a simple guy and things like effects and graphics aren’t the be all and end all for me. However, story and characters are… which we all know are sorely lacking in these new productions. I just wish they try harder in that department.
I think there is one director in Discovery who likes to use that spinning camera trick and I realized he used it in almost all of his episodes. Frakes goes a bit more old school with his directing but the others not so much.
I’ve grown weary of the words BREAKING and Star Trek movie in one line. We’ve had this time and again over the last couple of years… two projects in development at the same time, that Tarantino farce, Hawley’s project… you name it. I don’t believe it until I see it!
It feels like the mid 70s… Countless ideas to bring back Trek to the big screen or back to TV and nothing happened. At least we got lots of stuff on streaming TV this time round..
If this happens, I’d be glad… but who knows…
I wish her well, but I am deeply skeptical.
The executives they really have no idea what to do, moving forward. They have rejected 3 stories. And this week Spiner suggesting STNG movie with a new cast.
At this point, they should do something totally different. How about a hillarious comedy? A hybrid of Lower Decks and Galaxy Quest. Or a movie about the crazy lives of ST actors making a Star Trek Movie.
They could hire Mcmahan, Galaxy Quest and/or the Lego Movie producers to develop a STLD live version.
Produce something hilarious, not related to any previous film, until they figure it out what to do next. Hilarious, not absurd!
A Lego Star Trek movie… not a bad idea. That would have the potential to draw in a younger crowd and still appeal to oldies like us.
Prodigy is being made by the Hageman brothers who, as it happens, we’re the creatives behind the Lego Ninjago Movie.
If Paramount and Lego want to do it, the best creators are already linked to the franchise.
Wow. Didn’t know that. There is so much out there these days it’s difficult to keep with who is who in Hollywood.
Didn’t CBS give a license to produce Trek-related sets to some competitor of Lego?
Yes. I remember seeing Picard and Data.
I was not aware the Hageman Brothers are already onboard! This is great. Very likely this show will be a big hit.
My kid really enjoy all the Lego Star Wars shorts. They are hillarious. And less violent. This will be a big hit.
I think that your precious *canon* is like a**holes and opinions. Every armchair specialist has one. If the owners of these aging IP’s (ST and SW, etc.) listened to the wide array of “personal opinions” of these amateur commentators and self proclaimed “experts”, the end result would look like a product designed by a committee (which sadly is how every entertainment piece is designed anyway). And if you don’t like it, don’t buy it! That’s how most decisions are influenced in our society.
I’m all for “respecting the lore” and all that self righteous chest thumping. But guess what? I got over it! I still have the so called “classics” in my stable for when I am “in the mood” but again, the market has spoken. Demographics, generation gap, new trends whatever, time marches ever forward. No one is going to mass build something for the stuffy 1% of complainer purists and has-beens longing to live in 1966,1985,etc. again.
You know, in my time trawling in the depths of the fandom, I’m starting to understand why George Lucas finally called it quits. :p
Then can you explain why he didn’t quit earlier? He was getting crap about SW long before the internet, and his talent was already apparently spent at that point anyway. So why invest so much in infrastructure and time to deliver inferior crap that people were bound to disparage him for?
The prequels were mostly fine and Lucas did supervise the ‘clone wars’ series.
The prequels were mostly fine? I’m no SW devotee, so while I really ike SW and EMP, they aren’t be-alls and endalls; even so, EVERY feature film that followed those first two done under the auspices of GL was horrid. CLONES looked like BARNEY MILLER in space with its not-yet-there digital cameras, and the VFX for the army of stormtroopers was I thought from a video game, couldn’t believe they used it for a feature.
Any single one of the proposed films would’ve worked, starting with the obvious Beyond sequel starring Pine/Hemsworth idea. This has all been unnecessary stalling to try achieve an impossible $,$$$$$$$$$$ box office goal Star Trek will never actually meet. Because it’s Star Trek and break even profitable, but not obscenely superhero level high.
I say just bring the Borg back a.l.a Updated and scary again. I know its highly unlikely but what the hell. I’d still reckon such a movie would be a lot more entertaining and engrossing than most other ideas I’ve heard.
The Borg and Klingons have been done to death.
The Borg were in one movie from nearly 25 years ago and it was in most fans Top.3 fav. lists since then.
The Kingons have been in, like 6 films?
The Borg in Voyager are TV Borg. I think there is a difference. The costumes were even constantly reused from First Contact lol.
They have pretty much mined-out the Borg, I think. Where else can they go with them? They’ve already backtracked on what the Borg are (if they had a Borg Queen all along, why did they need Picard to be speak for them?) and from The Best of Both Worlds onward they have been consistently watered-down. We got a sympathetic Borg in I, Borg. Then we got Lore conspiring with the Borg in Descent. First Contact generally exists in isolation, ignoring I, Borg and Descent while adding in a Borg Queen that didn’t fit with any previous Borg backstory. Then we saw the Borg getting their rear ends handed to them by Species 8472 (and Janeway decided to help the Borg!) in Scorpion, which resulted in another sympathetic Borg in Seven of Nine, which in turn led to several more appearances of the decreasingly-scary Borg. And finally by Picard we see the Borg are defeated and being harvested for parts by other galactic powers. Wow, scary!
I suppose they could do an origin story, but would that really draw in audiences?
You make a convincing argument about the Borg. To be honest I love the borg as much as the next guy but I think they are 1 dimensional villains. They have no depth or layers to them. Basically there’s not much you can do with them that hasn’t been done before. Zero subtlety about them which handcuffs the writers.
I agree with what you’re saying… the Borg storyline is finished. Having said that, however, I don’t agree that the path to the end of that storyline was a bad one. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire Borg story arc.
I ~do~ grant you that the Borg Queen was kind of out of left field, but the storyline adapted to service the new plot device. ;)
If they are gonna do the borg and if they want to do it scary again like you say, then they have to get David Cronenberg to direct that movie. I don’t know if you are familiar with his films but imagine how he’d approach the body horror of the Borg. It would be just out of this world.
Yeah I think Cronenberg would be an ideal candidate if they went with the Borg too. He’s worked on mid-budget films mostly by looks of it which, which helps, so he’d be able to work well within a limited budget.
But most importantly I think he can find a way to make them scary again, which I believe we all want.
Rehashing and fan pleasing is how we ended up with ‘darkness’
Oh no 🤦♂️ no more bad robot, the first few seasons of Lost are good but most of their work is mystery box nonsense.
Too bad we can’t get new Star Trek that is as great and amazing as WandaVision.
Maybe they could at least cast Paul Bettany as a Trek Captain?
To be honest I think Wandavision is a bit overrated. In fact I find it a bit like an overlong holodeck episode of Trek. I think Trek at its best would blow a show like Wandavision out of the water.
The ending of WandaVision fell a little flat, though. We sat through nine deeply weird episodes for that? I was really expecting and hoping for a more direct tie-in to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. This was really just a nine-part origin story for Scarlet Witch and Photon. Did we really need it? Nope.
It about getting over loss and grief.
Some wanted it to be more than that.
Because it should’ve been and could’ve been. Getting over loss and grief and setting up the next phase of the franchise do not have to be mutually exclusive.
I think this is the 3rd or 4th concept that has been pitched for Star Trek 14. I’m not going to really care until the studio actually approves the movie, the cast is signed and production begins.
Its called ‘development hell’ and this is all standard practice.
I ask just one thing. Make sure the movie makes sense in-universe. A prime example of stupid writing to avoid. Parking a “star”ship at the bottom of a f&*king ocean. There’s a reason it’s called a STARship. Oh and one other…how bout we don’t make starship’s obsolete with a transporter that can send you halfway across the galaxy. We all good? Great!
Gene wanted the enterprise to able to land on planets in the OS but had to settle for transporter and shuttle.
Janeway finally got a starship that could do that years later.
And the films did at last with ‘darkness’
I figures it would happen eventually after Paramount and CBS merged back together-ish.
I bet this will tie into the Kurtzman-universe some how. Maybe pull one or two characters from it as part of a new crew.
I just hope it doesn’t suck
Well, I’m happy to see that ViacomCBS is insistent that the franchise multiverse makes sense as a whole.
Since they are carrying on with the contract with Bad Robot as the production company, I guess we can expect something big and splashy.
I’m still thinking that it will be a Michelle Yeoh vehicle with lots of fights and likely some timey wifey Guardian of Forever fun. I can see that working as a tent-pole movie and attracting a broader audience. I think that they know that fans will go to see it in the theaters on release and watch it when it lands 45 days later on Paramount+.
The Hawley concept sounded interesting, and it would be cool if something could be worked out for it to be a made-for-streaming movie. It didn’t sound like the kind of splashy thing that Paramount wants to put in theaters at this point. But there may not be an appetite for made-for-streaming Trek movies until Paramount has had a chance with a tent-pole release.
I suspect this will be a spin-off akin to DS9 and VOY and not set on the Enterprise, which is how it will be able to exist in the Kelvin timeline.
There is no confirmation that it needs to be in the Kelvin universe.
Ideally not. That whole stunt needs to be flushed down the nearest — airlock.
I’m up for new characters, new ship with some familiar names/faces thrown in. Something very original would be good in the theater. Unless…….it’s released directly through Paramount+ .
Another “Bad Reboot” production, they haven’t learned after 3 outings with declining ratings and cash return. I am definitely not excited about this project.. yet. Until there are storylines, cast details and more I’ll just complain about JJ Abrams idea of what Star Trek is
.
If Abrams is involved, then it’s a big no from me. I won’t support it. It’ll be wokeness personified too as is much of her writing, and I’m over more emotionally charged nonsense that is fake, shallow and reactionary.
Kurtz Trek is a mess at the moment. Abrams Trek was, and remains, an abortion.
The Short Trek “Ask Not” was pure crap. This does NOT bode well for her writing the next movie.
Pardon my lack of enthusiasm.
Irony is when these new writers go for a WOKE message and it ends up putting the audience to sleep!
‘trek’ was always woke.
How many times….
Tony, have a toke, take a stroke and you’ll be woke!
Trek doesn’t work as a tent pole film costing 200 million dollars. The law of diminishing returns takes care of that. It definitely doesn’t need JJ Abrams and his record of destroying the integrity of everything he touches.
So tell a story of depth and meaning, stop with the lens flares, bin the shouty actors and the Apple Mac Enterprise. Spend a quarter of the budget and engage with fandom. Slow everything down. Hire an orchestra to play themes with nautical cues that we know and love.
I guarentee we’ll buy into that before we buy into this.
Paramount learned that the hard way with TMP but didn’t take it in.
I should be happy, but writing is exactly the weak spot ofdiscovery.
Yes, sadly this stirs no excitement in me whatsoever.
Sorry but the Kelvin line is dead to me, though I would like urban as bones and Sophia back in some capacity.
If it’s like Discovery I have a prediction. It’s about the new Federation of space vegans that’s always right. Wokeness the final frontier!
Spock and most Vulcans are vegan
Touché, and he is always right
While logic is the dominant philosophy/religion of Vulcan and it is true Spock chooses to eat what he regards as lower ordered lifeforms, Veganism presents a rather unique problem for logical beings who can mind meld with all lifeforms, including artificial ones.
Veganism’s basic operating principle is that if a living creature that one might choose to eat has eyes with which to cry and/or mouths with which to scream then it is cruel to end its life to consume it. But a logical mind melding Vulcan can sense the unheard death knells of any living thing, even artificial ones, that the Vulcan chooses to kill by consuming it. Which causes the hungry cold soup slurping Vulcan to ponder, “How is this somehow more noble than ending life to consume meat?”
Staff,
Re: Fear of the Walking Dead
FWIW the series’ title is FEAR THE WALKING DEAD. There’s no “of” in it.
I have very low expectations for this film if it has anything to do with Bad Robot or Discovery.
.. so, much as they did with the past movies, especially generations was written by tv writers moore and bragga and a tv director like carson just to cut corners in the budget thus introducing the next gen crew to their first big screen adventure that looked just like another tv episode.. much why because they literally went from the series to movies without some time off and going full out on a big production.. yeah, seems like the new trek will be as disappointing and as cheap
Great news. Star Trek needs more fresh blood and ideas.