Simon Pegg Explains Why ‘Star Trek 4’ May Not Happen
Star Trek has recently experienced a resurgence on CBS All Access with Star Trek: Picard, a critically acclaimed reboot starring an exquisite Patrick Stewart in the title role. But the science-fiction franchise has been facing some challenges with its return to the big screen.
The last Star Trek feature film was 2016’s Star Trek Beyond. The third film in the reboot series, directed by Justin Lin and produced by J.J. Abrams, was a welcome addition to the canon and teased at a future of more movies with its updated cast. Simon Pegg, who plays Montgomery "Scotty" Scott and co-wrote Beyond, weighs in on why we haven’t seen (or most likely will see) a Star Trek movie anytime soon. Said Pegg in an interview with Games Radar:
The fact is, Star Trek movies don’t make Marvel money. They make maybe $500 million at the most, and to make one now, on the scale they’ve set themselves, is $200 million. You have to make three times that to make a profit.
I don’t feel like the last one… They didn’t really take advantage of the 50th anniversary. The regimen at the time dropped the ball on the promo of the film. And we’ve lost momentum. I think losing Anton [Yelchin] was a huge blow to our little family, and our enthusiasm to do another one might have been affected by that. So I don’t know.”
So there you have it. It’s also worth mentioning that the most recent Star Trek reboot occurred in 2009 with Star Trek directed by J.J. Abrams, before Star Wars had returned with its sequel trilogy. That made the competition for a blockbuster sci-fi movie set in space much less fierce, but that’s no longer the case.
As for the future of Star Trek movies, Noah Hawley is still slated to direct Star Trek 4, which will supposedly have a “new cast.” And Quentin Tarantino’s been flirting with the idea of a Star Trek movie for a while now, but it doesn’t look like it’s happening in the near future.
You can watch Season 1 of Star Trek: Picard on CBS All Access now.
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