‘Star Trek’ is apparently heading back to movie theatres as Paramount put a new prequel film in production directed by Andor’s Toby Haynes with ‘IT’ scribe Seth Grahame-Smith set to write.
The new movie will be produced by J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot and is said to be an origin story set decades before the 2009 Star Trek film… which raises some interesting questions… The 2009 movie split the Star Trek canon timeline into the “original” universe, where all current Star Trek is set, and the “Kelvin Timeline” where the Chris Pine, Simon Pegg, etc… films were set.
So, if this is a prequel, which universe will feature?
Initially, you would think any film set before the 2009 movie must be set with the original timeline, as the destruction of the USS Kelvin in that movie was the point when the timeline splintered. However, time can be a tricky thing… There has been some suggestion that the events of that film altered the timeline both forwards AND backwards, meaning the history of the “Kelvin Timeline” could be different to the original universe history. If that is the case, it could give the film a bit more freedom to play around with things without upsetting what they are doing on the Paramount+ TV shows. Will that be confusing to audiences? Possibly. Will they find a way to explain it? Possibly. At the moment we just don’t know.
Either way, given that it is a prequel set decades earlier, it is unlikely to feature any of the cast from the recent movies, with the possible exception of Zachary Quinto as Spock, given Vulcans age rather differently to humans. It should also be pointed out that a 4th film with the “Kelvin” cast is also apparently still in development at Paramount in addition to this new movie.
In regards to the people attached, director Toby Haynes is no stranger to big franchise prequels having worked on episodes of ‘Star Wars: Andor’. He was also behind the camera for the “USS Callister” episode of ‘Black Mirror’, which was something of a Star Trek parody, filtered through the twisted mind of Charlie Brooker. Writer Seth Grahame-Smith also has a lot of franchise experience, having written both ‘IT’ movies, along with ‘The Lego Batman Movie’, and the story for ‘Beetlejuice 2’. He is also the author of ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies‘.
We should stress, this film is currently noted as “in production”, and could sit in development for a while yet, but we’ll let you know if and when we hear more
