“A new Star Trek movie is coming!”
Here at io9 we’ve been telling you that quite a bit over the last few years—most recently last week, with the news that D&D: Honor Among Thieves tag team Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley were turning their focus where, it turns out, quite a few film producers have gone before. Although perhaps Star Trek‘s other friend in the ‘Star franchise’ genre has been in the spotlight the past few years for its inability to get a movie onto the big screen (that fortune will finally change next year), Trek has had an even longer break from the silver screen, with the gap between Star Trek Beyond and whatever’s next now longer—and only increasing—than the gap between Nemesis and the 2009 J.J. Abrams reboot.
It’s not been for a lack of trying, though. Over the years, even as Star Trek has flourished in its streaming TV renaissance, Paramount has attempted to get multiple Trek film projects off the ground, with some stuck in uncertain limbo and others failing to ever get out of spacedock. Here’s the rundown of what was, and still might be, in the works.
Star Trek 4 (2015, Dead As of 2025)
Oh, poor Star Trek 4. What a long history this had—multiple directors, multiple deaths, and multiple times that other projects on this list initially potentially started out as attempts to get it made, only to turn into their own thing that inevitably died their own deaths.
The chances of a fourth entry in the “Kelvin Timeline” series seem to be over for good now, with last month’s news from Paramount (in a post-Skydance-takeover world) that the studio was moving on from the idea of reuniting the rebooted Enterprise cast for another adventure. They say, “Never say never,” but you should probably say it about this one.
Quentin Tarantino’s Star Trek Film (2017, Dead As of 2019)
The first of several projects on this list that seemed like they were maybe Star Trek 4 before turning out not to be Star Trek 4, Quentin Tarantino’s Trek film was meant to be, at one time, one of the director’s final films before his retirement.
Pitched as an R-Rated take on the franchise, Tarantino eventually revealed that the project never really left early phases, with the director wanting to move on rather than make it his potential final directorial project. Although initially rumored to be unconnected from the “Kelvin” films, in 2021 screenwriter Mark L. Smith revealed that the project would’ve focused on Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk, sending him back to 1930s America in a mobster story inspired by the classic Trek episode “A Piece of the Action”.
Noah Hawley’s Star Trek Film (2019, Dead As of 2025)
Another “Star Trek 4 But Not” situation, Hawley was initially pegged as the latest director attached to Star Trek 4 before he himself started coming out and distancing the movie from Star Trek 4, describing his movie as a “new beginning.”
The outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic put Hawley’s film on hold indefinitely before eventually killing it altogether. Which is probably for the best, because Hawley’s idea apparently focused on a virus that wiped out most of the known universe. Oh, and androids, at some point? Wonder how much of that eventually made its way into Alien: Earth.
Kalinda Vazquez’s Star Trek Film (2021, Fate Unknown)
This may be the Star Trek film on this list we know the least about. Discovery writer Vazquez was tapped to write a new Star Trek film—specifically not Star Trek 4—in March 2021. We’ve heard absolutely nothing since.
Whatever Star Trek Film Paramount Was Bold Enough to Announce for June 9, 2023 (2021, Dead Some Time Before June 9, 2023)
Scratch that: this is the Star Trek film on this list we know the least about. A month after the revelation about Vazquez’s film, Paramount dated an untitled Star Trek film for June 9, 2023, that was specifically not Vazquez’s film, and was simply a J.J. Abrams-produced project.
June 9, 2023 came and went without a Star Trek film.
Patrick Stewart’s Star Trek Film (2024, Fate Unknown)
Not content with a whole three-season TV show that had just wrapped up Jean-Luc Picard’s story seemingly for good, in early 2024 Patrick Stewart announced that a new Star Trek film that would’ve continued the beloved Next Generation captain’s journey was in the works. It remains unknown if this film was intended for the big screen or was a planned streaming exclusive akin to this year’s (unfortunately incredibly bad) Michelle Yeoh vehicle Section 31, or if, frankly, it’s happening at all.
Seth Grahame-Smith and Toby Haynes’ Star Trek Film (2024, Fate Unknown)
Days after Stewart’s revelation, Paramount announced that it had tasked writer Seth Grahame-Smith and director Toby Haynes with developing yet another new Star Trek film, this one apparently based around the early days of Starfleet’s founding.
Little has been revealed since, other than that Simon Kinberg may end up producing and potentially shepherding more Star Trek films… all of this was before Paramount’s acquisition by Skydance, however, so it’s hard to say if that’s still the case.
Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley’s Star Trek Film (2025, Fate Unknown)
And that brings us to our latest Star Trek project, as of last week! Again, like so many of the films that came before it, we know barely anything about this film: beyond Goldstein and Daley’s involvement, the only concrete information so far is that (again, like a lot of films on this list), the project is meant to stand alone, separate from any prior Trek characters or series.
The only reason this one feels more concrete than anything that’s come before it is because it’s the first wholly new Star Trek project announced under Paramount’s new ownership. As the rest of this list shows, though, nothing is ever certain until we’ve beamed our butts into movie theater seats to actually watch it.
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