After Star Trek Beyond failed to make much noise at the box office, bringing in just $343 million worldwide against its nearly $200 million budget, a continuation of the Kelvin Timeline franchise was hardly a sure thing. And while Paramount ultimately decided to move forward with a fourth film, the studio still doesn’t know what it’s going to look like yet.
There are reportedly a number of scripts in consideration for the fourth (and let’s face it, probably final) film in this Star Trek reboot series, according to star Zachary Quinto, who said in an interview with Entertainment Tonight Canada (via Collider) that the much-ballyhooed Quentin Tarantino story isn’t necessarily the one that Paramount is going to go with.
“First of all, I think there’s a couple of scripts. Because there was a script being written before Quentin Tarantino came up with his idea for a potential film. And so I think they are kind of developing more than one. So I don’t know what is going to happen. Quentin is off doing another movie. So, I feel like we are in a state of anticipation. All of us are really excited about the idea of working with Quentin on a Trek film, but I know Simon Pegg and Doug Jung, who wrote the last film, are writing a script and there are another set of writers writing a script. So I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
By our count, that’s three scripts all vying for the spot of one movie: Tarantino’s, Pegg and Jung’s proper sequel to Beyond, and a mysterious team of writers working on a third script. For a while it seemed like the odd idea of having Tarantino direct the film was a sure thing, but if he can’t work it out with his schedule then it’s not going to happen. And given that Beyond made over $100 million less than its predecessor, Into Darkness, it’s not too surprising that Paramount would want to explore options outside of whatever Pegg and Jung have in mind by hiring another group of writers to come up with something else.
There’s no release date yet for the next Star Trek film, but hopefully the studio gets this script business sorted out quickly so we can return to the final frontier sooner rather than later.
