Fans of the Star Trek Enterprise may have to wait a little longer to finally hop aboard. The long queue of passing directors is making it excessively harder for Paramount to launch the project. The rebooted franchise that began with J.J. Abrams’s Star Trek starring Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto breathed new life into Trekdom after a comparative period of hiatus of the live-action films beginning after the launch of Star Trek: Nemesis in 2002.
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Star Trek Future Up For Debate After Shakman’s Exit
In 2007, J.J. Abrams accepted Paramount Pictures’s offer to direct a new Star Trek film that would serve more as a reboot than a revival of the franchise. Dubbed the Kelvin Timeline, 2009’s Star Trek established itself as an individual entity removed from the continuity of its predecessors while staying true to the original course of the narrative’s shaping events.
The reboot served as a stellar success with Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) and Star Trek Beyond (2016) receiving 84% and 86% on Rotten Tomatoes respectively. Following a considerable delay in the gear-up of the fourth film, due to unforeseeable global events, the franchise now faces a new strum of threat to its fruition due to the lack of availability of a suitable director.
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Star Trek 4‘s Fate Dwindles Due to Lack of Director
Following Matt Shakman‘s exit from the project in favor of Marvel’s reboot of the Fantastic Four in its Phase 6 launch, the Star Trek franchise has been suffering crucial blows in its hunt for a director. Shakman, who was associated with Marvel previously in its Phase Four series, WandaVision received critical praise for his multiple Emmy-winning series.
However, with him exiting the project, Quentin Tarantino and Noah Hawley were being considered too before being passed on for other propositions. With the Trekkies’ patience wearing thin, Paramount really needs to settle on a suitable director as soon as possible.
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The movie which has been currently slated for December 22, 2023 release is now facing speculation about whether it will indeed be finished on time. As the franchise heads toward an indefinite future, the Trek fandom keeps relentlessly swarming around the issue at hand, especially after Tarantino’s proposition for a fresh take on the universe was passed over in favor of a continuation of the Kelvin Timeline’s fourth installment.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter