It’s been nine years since Star Trek Beyond, and I still like the beats and shouting. Overall, though, that movie was something of a disappointment—especially now that it’s the last time we’ll see that cast on the Enterprise. An in-depth Variety piece on the new CEO of Paramount, David Ellison, includes this disappointing sentence: “The hope is to have a fresh Star Trek movie, though the studio has moved on from the idea of bringing back Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and the rest of the ensemble from the J.J. Abrams reboot.”
The long-gestating, now-dead fourth film went through a lot of change before never actually coming to fruition. Last year, Steve Yockey (The Flight Attendant) was brought on to write a screenplay. At various points, Matt Shakman (WandaVision) and Noah Hawley (Alien: Earth) were attached to the film in some way.
(There’s no word on what this means for the “origin” Star Trek movie that was also maybe going to happen.)
Ellison founded Skydance Media in 2006; in August, Skydance and Paramount merged, and Ellison is now CEO of the Paramount Skydance Corporation. This isn’t his first experience with Star Trek; he was an executive producer on Star Trek Into Darkness. But it’s an odd fit.
As Variety describes, Ellison seems to lean in the opposite direction from Star Trek‘s generally progressive perspective. Variety notes, “Sources say that President Donald Trump has greenlit plans to host one of the first UFC fights under Paramount’s $7.7 billion deal with the MMA league on the lawn of the White House,” and goes on to observe, “While the spectacle might sound like a discarded scene from the 2006 dystopian comedy Idiocracy, it provides a glimpse into Ellison’s rising empire, one that skews alpha male and that some fear will entwine the studio’s content more closely with MAGA messaging.”
Ellison—whose father is Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle and the world’s second-richest person—is also interested in making his company even bigger: “Most of Hollywood is buzzing about what the U.S. cultural landscape might look like if the Ellisons succeed in acquiring CNN — and the rest of Warner Bros. Discovery. The Ellisons have made two offers for Warner Bros. Discovery after floating a trial balloon in September about its plan to bid, which had the effect of putting the company in play,” says Variety.
What a “fresh” Star Trek looks like under this leadership remains to be seen. Some of the future of Trek is certain: Two more seasons of Strange New Worlds, and at least two seasons of Starfleet Academy. But what the franchise will look like when it next warps onto the big screen is a sizable question mark.
