It's been a while since we've had a Star Trek film in theaters. From 1979 to 2002, it felt like Star Trek film would always have a movie on the silver screen until the heat death of the universe. However, in the early 2000s, the franchise was steadily running out of impulse power and desperately needed to be retooled. In 2009, J.J. Abrams launched the Star Trek reboot trilogy and helped successfully make the franchise more palatable to the non-Trekkie mainstream. Unfortunately, by 2016, the series would again run out of steam. Despite the third film in the trilogy, Star Trek Beyond, performing well at the box office, the franchise's momentum came to a crawl.
Earlier this year, it seemed like Paramount finally remembered that they had a Star Trek film series and seemingly green-lit the fourth movie in the franchise. Well, now Paramount has decided to pull the plug by removing Star Trek 4 from their production slate.
Paramount has removed its untitled "Star Trek" sequel from its upcoming film slate. The project, produced by J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot, had been dated to hit theaters on Dec. 22, 2023. The rather inevitable news comes roughly one month after director Matt Shakman exited the "Star Trek" film, which was nominally set to be the fourth cinematic tour of duty for Chris Pine as Kirk, Zachary Quinto as Spock, Zoe Saldana as Uhura, Karl Urban as Bones, John Cho as Sulu and Simon Pegg as Scotty. Shakman was successfully courted by Marvel Studios to helm its "Fantastic Four" reboot, reuniting the "WandaVision" director with the studio, after "Spider-Man: No Way Home" director Jon Watts left that film in April.
