Recently the seemingly dormant Star Trek 4 project has shown signs of life at Paramount, and a just-released interview with Pine conducted earlier this year indicates he is ready to work with the studio to play Kirk again.
Pine would “love” to do another Star Trek movie
The brand-new podcast Things are Going Great for Me (which launched yesterday) features an interview with Star Trek actor Chris Pine, recorded in April. Even though some of the details may be out of date, Pine did say some noteworthy things about his future with the Trek franchise, especially in light of him having walked away from the 2018 salary negotiations for the Star Trek 4 project just months before that film was supposed to go into production. That also means the interview was conducted four months before news broke that the Noah Hawley Star Trek project has been put on pause and that Star Trek 4 project may be back in play.
Podcast host J. Claude Deering got into the subject with Pine by discussing the much talked about Quentin Tarantino Star Trek project with Pine:
Deering: Are you working with Tarantino on the next Star Trek, what is the latest?
Pine: I haven’t heard anything. I mean, I get asked these questions all the time. I’m like the last person to find anything out. So, I’ve heard, what have I heard? Tarantino is going to do one. And then, who is it? Noah Hawley was going to do something else, and then that fell through. And then he’s going to do something with the Discovery, the new Alex Kurtzman-led cast. So, I really don’t know. I know that Paramount is coming out of having restructured a bit and kind of a major corporate restructuring. So hopefully when all that dust settles, something concrete will come out of it and we’ll get to work. I’d love to do it.
There is a lot to unpack from that brief exchange. It appears Pine knew the Noah Hawley film was falling off the front burner at Paramount months before that news hit the trades. Pine also seems to indicate there was some discussion of a film involving the cast from Star Trek: Discovery.
But the most important thing Pine said was that he’s still ready to get back to work playing Captain James T. Kirk for Paramount. Pine’s talk about corporate restructuring may be his way of hinting that the studio is in a better financial position now than when money talks broke down in 2018. The latest reporting about the new head of Paramount’s Motion Picture Group making Star Trek a priority and considering reviving the Star Trek 4 project with Pine and Chris Hemsworth could be the “when all that dust settles” moment Pine was looking forward to last April.
Even though Pine, who turned 40 this week, walked away from the negotiation table in 2018, he has maintained he wants to return to the role. And he continues to have a good relationship with Paramount. The studio tapped him in April to reboot The Saint, with reporting at the time saying Paramount was still interested in him returning to Star Trek as well.
Chris Pine as Kirk with Anton Yelchin as Chekov and John Cho as Sulu in Star Trek Beyond
How a bad movie experience almost kept Pine from becoming Kirk
During the podcast Chris Pine talked about how he got his start with Star Trek, including how he went in for multiple auditions and a bad experience on a different movie he did between the auditions almost kept him from sticking with Hollywood altogether:
Pine: I had been doing a play at the Geffen called Fat Pig and auditioned for [Star Trek] and was so busy doing a play I really didn’t think twice about it. I didn’t do well in the audition. I didn’t think anything about it. I went off and did a film that I absolutely had the worse time on [probably the low-budget horror film Carriers], came back and then my agent was, “The audition for Star Trek is back.” And I was really in a place of wanting to move to New York and just disappointed in the film world. And do theater or something.
They convinced me to go in for this audition… And one of the [scenes] was when I first meet Uhura and flirting with her. and that’s a lot of fun because it’s comedy. But the other one was really hard. It’s a bunch of gobbledygook on the bridge. You know, photons and phasers and all that kind of stuff. It’s difficult to do when you are sitting in a plastic chair in a conference room. But [producer/director] J.J. [Abrams] was so fucking incredible. He is so animated, and so alive and so enthusiastic. He is a lover of acting and a lover of cinema, and that clicked the whole vibe in the room and I felt like I could do anything. I really credit his openness in the room for opening me up and letting me do my thing and that was that.
Chris Pine with J.J. Abrams on the set of Star Trek
Listen to the full Pine interview, including talking to Tarantino about his grandmother
The entire first episode of Things are Going Great for Me can be heard below. The Pine interview starts at 14:10. In addition to Star Trek, they cover a lot, including Wonder Woman and how Quentin Tarantino spoke to his mom at an Oscar party for 40 minutes all about Pine’s grandmother, actress Anne Gwynne.
Keep up with all the news on Star Trek 4 and upcoming Trek films at TrekMovie.com.
Hopefully it is the Pike cast of Discovery (Number One, etc) that can transition to Chris Pine and the TOS crew either in the prime universe or another multiverse. The Discoprize 1701 has an excellent cast, right sets and ship, Kelvin universe has an excellent cast (include Carol Marcus as well and add Saavik!). Put them together but leave the Kelvinprize at the Apple Store.
I dunno, I think it’d be a bit too confusing to mix the casts of different universes, especially since we know what Kelvin Pike looks like.
Not to mention SNW’s Spock is played by a different actor from the JJ Verse’s Spock. Its best to just keep them seperate.
Yeah they seem like they really want to keep the movie cast seperate from the TV cast as much as possible. That might change somewhat with the merger but at the moment they probably still want to keep them separate UNLESS they move on from the Kelvin cast completely and start new.
I don’t think it will change. The Trek movies are more for casual fans.
Are you really this lonely? You know I don’t like you. I don’t want to talk to you as much as you desperately you seem you want to talk to me. Never going to happen man. Never. So once again leave me alone.I’m sorry you’re this hard up to have a conversation with people here but I don’t read your posts or care what you say about anything. Please do the same for me and ignore me.All I ask. Really.
What?
🙇🏾♀️
You seem to have issues. Or maybe extremely lonely. I don’t know what they are, don’t care. Leave me alone.
About time for that medication, huh?
Says the guy who comes here to spread misinformation all the time? Yeah we get it, you think all new shows sucks. Guess what, they are not GOING anywhere chief. You understand? You guys are both trolls, just on the opposite ends. At least he doesn’t waste our time with Midnight Edge BS. That other guy just seems lonely. But you are just as much of a waste of space here.
Saavik would be way too young unless they jumped ahead 20 years.
Could have it where they discover her on the Romulan planet, Spock takes her in, etc. Also could start moving into the movie era
Apple Store lol
No thanks
What a load…there’s absolutely nothing to unpack here. It’s an old interview, with no information. You could ask Pine twenty years from now, is he ready to play Kirk again, and the answer is yes. Shatner is older then dirt, and he still says yes. The reality of the situation remains, yes, Trek is talked about in quarterly investor calls. The franchise is doing great at CBSAA.Outside of that, there’s nothing in the pipe at the moment. Nothing.
Well even Pine admitted he really knows nothing about these movies. It sounds like he just reads about them off the internet like we do. The only one he probably had any real information about, ie, he read the script, was the Hemsworth movie they were trying to actually make before they both walked away on.
If anything, this interview makes it pretty clear no movie is on the horizon anytime soon sadly. And it may not be with Pine if and when another movie does happen.
These movies are basically a canary in a coalmine.
If they announced a movie TODAY,, we probably won’t see it until 2022 or 2023 the soonest. That is 6-7 years since Beyond premiered. Paramount is clearly not in a rush to make another one or they would’ve greenlit the Tarantino or Hawley movie or just paid Pine what they were suppose to pay them and green light that movie.
Clearly there is not a huge mandatory to make one anytime soon.
There have been a lot of little bits of news that have floated by the wayside as time passes. Talent hasn’t been kind to the sequel that was supposed to go into production right after STB; recall Hemsworth basically called the story garbage. JJ’s agreement with WB allows him to finish up any projects he had in development with his previous employers the longer Trek languishes in development hell, the less likely it is WB will let him work it. So, in addition to having to develop a concept, they need to find a new production house who will do it for a substantially lower budget the BR had. Paramount is still a studio in financial distress. If they go into bankruptcy, that could postpone any future features indefinitely.
Even if they greenlit today, Americans are still Typhoid Mary to the rest of the world. If any of the talent is outside the US, they won’t be back until travel restrictions are lifted, clearly, Americans won’t be heading out of country until we hand leadership back to functioning adults, hopefully this year. That doesn’t get anything going until the middle of next year – or Paramount keeps the production in the US, at additional cost.
I really thing that if we see anything feature length anytime soon, it’ll be something direct to streaming. That seems to be where the momentum is at the moment.
You’re mangling the idiom there. Care to elaborate?
I don’t know, there was this line:
“And then he’s going to do something with the Discovery, the new Alex Kurtzman-led cast. So, I really don’t know”
Obviously there’s no context, was it something Pine got confused about? A misquote perhaps? Or has there been a serious discussion about developing something from the TV side.
About the only new piece of info out of this was that Pine seemed to know the Hawley and Tarantino treatments were pretty much dead way before mainstream media caught wind of that info (especially the Hawley story). Beyond that, yeah, it’s another “I’d love to do another movie” puff piece.
Is that really true? I don’t understand who watches the CBSAA Trek shows. I haven’t met anyone in real life who thinks those shows are worth watching. The audience is apparently composed of the sort of people that I never cross paths with.
Actually the show about Picard is pretty decent. i could be wrong altogether but the kelvinverse might be put on hold since Picard and stange new worlds will be in the works.
Maybe you should get out more often….
Sure, I’ll just ring up the pandemic and tell it to pause so I can get out and mingle.
I wish it were that easy.
I hope the movie gets made. I enjoy Pine as an actor
Chris Pine should do a Strange New Worlds movie. Star Trek 4 could be based on Strange New Worlds.
I agree Star Trek 4 could be a SNW film, like to help get the series going, But why bring in Kirk to that?
Pine is too old to play a young Kirk which he’d have to be since SNW is (presumably) 10 years before Kirk takes over. And let us not forget that he served on the Faragut, when he was younger, not enterprise.
Personally I don’t understand everyone’s lust to bring Kirk in, we’ve seen that before. Pike is new and fresh, and there’s ALOT of unexplored history there .
Paramount should learn that there is a ceiling to a Star Trek movie box office. That way they don’t blow their load on a huge budget, don’t make their money back, and then not make anymore Trek movies.
Small budget makes more focus on character. Also a smaller budget would have less silly giant set pieces and fisticuffs. I’d rather any action be in space with crew on the bridge.
Yes, yes, yes! From your lips to Paramount’s ears!
Same. After the second movie barely made money I suggested they would do a lot better to treat it a bit more like a TV show and make smaller $20 million movies more frequently. Shoot them back to back the way certain trilogies are filmed and release one or two a year. That would give them a lot of screen time to get a lot of character development under their belt quickly and then they could ramp up and do a much bigger 4th or 5th film after a longer break.
Yes certainly that was the case with The Wrath of Khan and many of the best shows in Star Trek have been the ‘bottle shows’ where everything takes place on the ship due to tight budgets as Nick Meyer says ‘ art thrives on limitations’
It’s no way they can make $20 million Star Trek movies lol That’s just not reality. Even cheapest ones will probably be around $100 million for the FX alone. And if they still want to compete worldwide.
How much are the TV shows costing now, $8 million each? $16 million per 2 hours. Surely double the budget of the TV show would create a pretty nice movie, if the writing was there.
Maybe $20 million is a little too low, but they don’t need to be more than $50 million for sure. Unless the actors just won’t work for a reasonable rate. However, all the actors have done smaller movies or shows after Trek so I would think they would be satisfied as long as they were getting a share of whatever the movie does bring in.
The internet says that the pilot episode for Star Trek Voyager allegedly cost 23 million to make. Including inflation that would correspond to almost 40 million today.
On a TV show a lot of the costs can be spread across several episodes, e.g. by reusing sets, props, costumes etc. Also, you might have noticed that, despite its budget, Discovery doesn’t feature a whole lot of different ships, planets, etc. It seems that they do need to watch their budget.
On a movie, you have a lot more one-time costs because everything is essentially designed and built for the movie. Also, I would guess that actor salaries are probably higher on a movie compared to a TV show where actors are hired on a per-season basis.
Jeff, you’re comparing TV production to movie production. There is a BIG difference between the two for a reason. You can’t just ‘double the TV budget’ because you’re missing the fact in movies, especially sci fi and fantasy the production scale is just much bigger, especially when it comes to visual effects. That’s the biggest difference between TV and film outside of the star’s salary. There is a reason why the average CW DC TV show cost around $4-5 million an episode but the average DC film is around $160 million. TV effects would look like a joke on the big screen.
And yes while the movies can be made less than what the Kelvin movies cost, $50 million would still be ridiculous today. Most romantic comedies cost more than $50 million to make now.
And $50 million movies don’t get IMAX or 3D releases and certainly not a huge global distribution like other big franchises would. It’s no longer the 80s, if Paramount wants these movies to compete on a global scale, then they have to spend the money on them.
And lastly Pine walked away from the last movie because they didn’t want to pay him what they promised him before. You’re not going to get them for even LESS money. You would have to start with a new cast at this point if you wanted something that cheap to be made.
No. What I’m actually saying is they don’t need as many of the big special effects to make a good Star Trek theatrically released movie as Paramount seems to think. A slightly amped up TV show might be just fine if they were more frequent like once or twice a year, instead of one movie every 4-5 years.
But why should people pay for a movie ticket if they can get more of the same on TV? That’s the problem: The studio needs to convince people that the movie is going to give them something that TV can’t. Usually, that’s spectacle. And spectacle costs.
Well in this particular case it would be seeing more of the Kelvin timeline, which isn’t on TV, unless you just want to wait for the DVD. Which is actually the case for all movies, so shouldn’t a reason.
And its why I think the Kelvin cast time is over for future films. You’re not going to get them for a much smaller price tag. I mean sure some will take a pay cut but I have a feeling they are all paid 7 figures on these films now and the type of budget you’re suggesting would never work with so many main characters.
We basically know Hawley’s film was going to be with a new cast. MAYBE it would be the TOS characters but my guess is they do want it to be a cheaper film too, but it’s still probably going to be around $100 million more or less.
But with a new and cheaper cast it will be much easier to keep some of the cost down at least. But I highly doubt you can have it both ways or we would’ve had another film by now with both Pine and Hemsworth.
Funny, it was 2 years ago this month when we heard they walked out of negotiations and many thought both sides were just bluffing to see who would cave first…guess neither were bluffing. ;)
It seems extremely unlikely that the Kelvin cast would agree to do a Trek movie at such a low budget as that would suggest taking a huge pay cut, and present much less prestige. If your franchise suddenly goes from 180 million to 50 million that’s a career killer for an actor. Yes, even A-list stars sometimes do low-budget movies but those tend to be artsy passion projects.
Even if the actors agreed to do it, what you’re suggesting would essentially strip the movie of the unique selling point that the Kelvin movies had compared to other Trek. The movie would most likely struggle to find an audience of any considerable size. And let’s not kid ourselves, the chances that you would get a really good story are very slim. Most likely, you’d end up with a cheap and bad movie.
Actors take a pay cut all the time if they they don’t have a job lined up. I’m sure they have a minimum amount where they’d rather just stay home and live off their savings, but Chris Hemsworth made an estimated 15 million off Avengers, there’s no way Netflix paid him that much for Extraction. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, and Karl Urban have all been in smaller movies and TV shows since the latest Star Trek. Zoe Saldana has had a full plate of movies so who knows about her with five upcoming Avatar movies and another Marvel movie.
Regardless, it’s not out of the question that they’ll work for less than they got on previous jobs. The question is whether they think it’s worth it and whether they expect the movie to make a lot. If Paramount can convince them it’s a smaller movie then the actors will just have to weigh that against other offers and decide which they want more. Further the Star Trek canon or be in the next Netflix or Hulu TV show.
Exactly! That’s the issue. When you already have 5 new Star Trek shows running, then you have to make the movies feel as big and an event as possible, otherwise, why bother?
MAYBE if this was pre-Discovery where we only had the movies that could’ve been feasible but even then I doubt it because Paramount wants these movies to play world wide and in places like China. These movies are all competing against each other and they aren’t going to get the distribution Paramount wants if they feel the movie isn’t going to be a huge draw for the masses. That’s just the reality.
Paramount realized that themselves when they made the first Kelvin movie. And now after going so big for 3 films, you can’t go that little either and expect the same response from movie goers. They’ll probably make a profit, but not on the level most studios wants these days, especially with their bigger franchises.
I agree with you on that BUT they have said they see Star Trek as a tentpole franchise, ie, they expect it to make a lot of money. The only way they can pull in more people is by making them spectacles. Yes, ‘we’ will pay and see whatever they make but they know for EVERYONE ELSE they have to convince them that paying to see a Star Trek movie on IMAX is worth it.
And that means for it to feel like a big screen effort you can only get by watching it that way and not just feeling like its a 2 part episode you could’ve waited to arrive on Netflix to watch later. That’s the issue.
If that’s the route they want to take, just make it a TV movie? I have suggested that plenty of times for a proposed Pike TV movie as an example when I doubted we would get a full on show. But if they still want to compete with the big boys then they have to spend the big money. Otherwise, why bother when you can just make more TV shows instead?
Yeah I don’t think that price point is realistic. You see the lack on money onscreen. Even using old sets and models and costumes, “The Undiscovered Country” and “Generations” were hurt by their budgets. Frakes and Moore lamented that they were right back where they were on the show – pinching pennies to be able to afford 3 phaser shots instead of 2, and reusing stock footage and shortening space battles. Movies cost more because they have to, there are many considerations that go into making them look up to par.
They can save money by hiring a completely unknown cast, but then you lose a big selling point as well. I firmly believe budgetary restrictions do force creativity and if you have someone like Nicholas Meyer working with you then you could cleverly make it work. But for a sci fi space film, a sub-$80 million budget is a tough sell these days.
I may have lost track of the inflation a little bit. There’s definitely not many movies on this list in the $20 million range that have done well in the last two years. https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/budgets/all/2401
The point is though to try something new and write out 3-6 stories (that don’t intentionally inflate the budget), figure out where sets can be shared, and plan for a 3-4 month post production schedule on each movie instead of 6-12 months. Then shoot them all at once and release them once or twice a year.
So instead of one movie for $200-300 million they have four to six movies and a lot more screen time to develop the characters. The question is whether there is an audience for theatrical Star Trek movies with only one quarter of the explosions and outlandish action.
I say there probably is because almost every instance where the series preceded the theaters people complain about the movie being too flashy and having lacking substance.
I think the main appeal of Star Trek over the years is spending a lot of time with likable characters in futuristic situations. Not spending a little bit of time in over the top action adventure. The movies feel like lesser versions of the TV show because there isn’t as much time. It’s like meeting up with old friends once a year for a reunion compared to seeing a friend every week.
A. You are pulling a list that are based on movies made decades ago or that were generally small films. The only movie I see on that list that is blockbuster status is Empire Strikes Back. And its no way you can make a Star Wars movie for $20 million today.
B. What you’re describing just doesn’t make a lot of sense when that can just be geared for a TV show. Picard only has 10 episodes a season as it is. So instead of making 3-4 $20 million films, why not just make another TV season with that same money and amount of hours?
Thats why this is just not realistic. It just sounds like TV budget episodes on the big screen. At the very least this would be more feasible for a TV movie, not something you throw on IMAX.
I think character work is the biggest reason the 2009 film hit it big. It’s a fun film and the characters are well-defined and casted takes on the beloved originals. The story is kind of pants and the straining to make a separate but equal continuity may have given us a Leonard Nimoy last hurrah, but it’s a little messy. The production values being as big as a tent pole blockbuster did not hurt, but they would have been a waste of money if the characters and tone were off.
i do think Hollywood has a tendency to try to spend its way out of being as clever as it could be, and Trek fell victim to that with Into Darkness and to a lesser extent the other two Kelvin films. Somewhere between being too cheap, as was a problem frequently in for the TOS and TNG films, and spending frivolously as Abrams does, there’s a sweet spot where Trek is budgeted well but still has to script smartly and find happy accidents in lieu of just saying they’ll fix it in post and throw money at it. At that level they can hit a bunch of triples and gross similarly to Beyond to get Paramount good buzz but not break the bank.
Great points!
In fact I remember reading a few interviews with Frakes talking about First Contact and Insurrection back in the day. For FC, he said it felt like a bigger production for sure but there were still a lot of things he had to compromise on, the biggest being the opening Borg battle scene. He originally wanted that to be huge like something you see in Star Wars with multiple cubes and hundreds of Starfleet ships, but it was no way the budget would allow for something like that. Instead he got one cube and about a dozen ships. It still looks good but it still feels pretty small to the stuff you see in space battles today.
The irony is on Voyager they were able to get a dozen Borg cubes on the screen a year after FC premiered in Scorpion because it’s a lot cheaper to do it on TV (but still expensive, just on a TV level expense).
With Insurrection, he said he felt like the budget was less than FC (although technically it was more but it went to cast salaries, mainly Stewarts) and that they had a tough time trying to make Ba’Ku feel like an alien world and that it ended up feeling like being on a standard TNG planet set…just bigger. They also didn’t have the money for a lot of the CGI shots and cut out a lot of the ending because of it. That movie probably felt the cheapest out of all of the TNG films IMO.
That’s the difference with the Kelvin movies, it seems like they just added more and more to those to make them feel as big and epic as needed.I read STID went $40 million over budget. Maybe the problem was they spent TOO MUCH on them, but they really do look and feel like real cinematic movies where as TOS and TNG mostly felt like extended episodes. They could get away with that back then, but today it would be much harder to do, especially now with a bigger global audience.
Yeah it’s another example of how Trek is king on tv but an also-ran at the movies. That has been the case since 1989, really – the films between 1989 and 1998 were sleeper hits, not blockbusters, hence JJ Abrams managing something quite impressive at the box office at least.
But on TV you could have two spinoffs at once and TNG, DS9 and Voyager as the big fish in their respective ponds. An entire streaming channel is fueled by new Trek content and raking in the dough as a result (even though the domestic audience is probably not bigger than watched Enterprise!) It seems it was easier to budget the series as well – a sweeps extravaganza would be made up for by a couple bottle shows.
A movie has to sustain audience interest at a higher level for its duration and that invariably means wowing with action and set pieces – the likes of Duet, The Inner Light and The City on the Edge of Forever would not fly without some potentially unsatisfying injections of excitement and singular villain characters who must be thwarted. It’s just the nature of the beast, and every film except The Voyage Home has had to follow that formula. And it all costs money. TV is where the franchise can afford to experiment, and because it’s better-monetized now, ironically they can spend more to do it.
The spectacle has to be with the worlds explored.
Something as eye popping as pandora can be realised on a medium to large budget in a ‘trek’ movie.
I’m not so sure. There are two examples of a big-budget Trek movie that did well at the box office: TMP and ST09. TMP was, in fact, a very character-oriented piece; it had no villain at all, and showed us Spock’s recognition of his own humanity.
TMP was never considered a success by paramount.
They were more than eager to go down the action route with ‘khan’ with a smaller budget.
Adjusted for inflation, TMP remains the second highest grossing Trek movie, right behind Star Trek 2009.
The problem was that Paramount was expecting Star Wars levels of box office from TMP, which was just unrealistic. That’s why they pivoted to the “make ’em quick and cheap” model for subsequent movies starring the TOS And TNG cast.
They overcompensated for sure, but some of the wind was knocked out of their sails by how disappointing TMP was with critics and viewers who had been waiting so long for a return to that universe. Box office was respectable, but I doubt that spending more on TWOK would have made it a more successful film. It’s only once you get to TFF that the stinginess is visibly hurting the franchise.
I think the mixed critical and fan response to TMP came down to critics and fans not appreciating the more cerebral approach the movie took, calling it dull and slow when they didn’t get another action packed blockbuster. While I can understand that thinking to a certain degree, in the long run I find that it’s the more thoughtful films that seem to hold up and remain in the conversation (2001 is another great example of this as many forget it was derided in many quarters when it first debuted for a lot of the same reasons as TMP). Over the years, I think TMP has developed more of a following and the luxury of hindsight and convenience of home video has allowed it to gain a larger appreciation. I think the Dirctor’s Edition is an even better version of the movie and continue to hope Paramount one day spends the money and releases a proper BluRay version of that cut.
I also think the actors’ egos really get in the way of their viewing the merits of TMP objectively. Nimoy’s clashes with Roddenberry are well documented and I think they colored his perceptions of the movie. I’m also sure Shatner was not wild about how vulnerable Kirk was for the first half of the movie (he had similar reservations to Kirk’s mid-life crisis during the making of TWOK). Personally, I always thought that Kirk and especially Spock go thru some major changes and evolutions in their story arcs and you can easily check off Spock’s being at peace with his Vulcan and human halves in his latter appearances to the journey he goes thru in TMP.
While I enjoyed TWOK, I also didn’t think it was the great Star Trek movie other people seem to think it is. It had some pretty big plot holes, like the Reliant’s crew mistaking one planet for another. Again, Spock and especially Kirk get the good character arcs yet almost the rest of the cast (excepting maybe Chekov) has about as little to do here as in TMP while new characters like Saavik and David get more screen time. The more militaristic tone and final ship to ship battle, while entertaining, are also pretty divergent from Trek’s core values.
All just my opinions of course.
I would agree TMP has gotten a positive reappraisal, especially since the Director’s Edition, sorely missed in HD.
There surely is a ceiling, but Paramount would have thought it was $150 million worldwide if they didn’t hire JJ Abrams and spend that much on the production budget alone in 2009. They probably should not spend more than that again, but the wisdom still is that there’s money left on the table overseas if they can just have another crack at it. Starting fresh with an all new cast is probably less appealing than trying another Kelvin film, just not one that costs $190 million.
William Shatner was 37 when he finished his last day on TOS. Chris Pine’s Kirk is going to have to deal with V’ger in the not too distant future.
Yep. It was 10 years between the end of TOS and TMP (real world timing.) The first Kelvin film was 11 years ago; sobering…
And it was filmed almost 13 years ago. They delayed the release for almost a year because of the 2008 writer strike.
el em ay oh.
If he didn’t demand an outlandish pay check the movie would have started production
Based on what was reported he only asked for what Paramount had previously promised to pay him.
Interestingly, it also seems that he was paid substantially less for his Treks than what Stewart got for the TNG movies even though the TNG movies had far lower budgets overall.
There’s nothing outlandish about asking a company to honor an existing agreement, which is what Pine was doing. It was Paramount who wanted to renegotiate to save a few bucks, as much because of the failure of other movies they released as Beyond’s box office under-performance.
While I would not mind seeing another movie with the Kelvin cast, I remain unconvinced that Star Trek can achieve the mainstream theatrical appeal at the level Paramount wants. Prior Kelvin movies have had big budgets, big stars and big stories and still failed to break thru to the levels of other franchises. Really not sure what else they could do to make a theatrical Star Trek stand out without potentially turning it into something unrecognizable as Trek.
Please, Paramount, give us something new, not another TOS rehash.
Agreed. If they do another one with the Kelvin crew, I’m fine with that. But if not, PLEASE do something completely different with new characters. TOS doesn’t have to be rebooted over and over on the big screen.
This is great, so he’ll reduce his hefty wage demand which prevented the film haoppening in the first place?
Neither Pine or Hemsworth would do such a thing, nor should they.
Sorry, can’t get over how this Kirk foolishly engaged the swarm in ‘beyond’, despite Spock’s warning.
Resulted in huge loss of life and his ship.
Wouldn’t have happened to shatner.
He cared about his ship, crew.
Dont see it happening without Anton Yelchin. A Captain Sulu film on the other hand might be viable. As to Chris Pine, I suggest pouncing on a Role Play Game Setting like Stars Without Number and creating a whole new Scifi franchise.
It might not happen but the fact that they’ve made numerous attempts to get a movie off the ground and all of the principals have expressed an interest subject to receivIng acceptable remuneration suggests that Yelchin’s tragic passing will have no bearing on whether it comes to pass. Ultimately this is a numbers game, Star Trek movies are never going to make Avengers money but we have a relatively A list cast that is getting more and more expensive…
I thought Jaylah was good, plus Yelchin worked with her on the last movie
Yelchin was great as Chekov, but also a relatively minor character in the Kelvin movies. It seems unlikely that the absence of Chekov would stop them from making another movie.
They could jettison Chekov, Sulu, Uhura and Scotty entirely and have a decent movie. Likely much more focused.
I look forward to this happening.
I know lots of you can’t stand the JJ-verse, but honestly it works better then what he brought to Star Wars.
Ironic.
Plus he did bring Star Trek back to the forefront of science fiction and got people interested in Trek again.
So many of you complain that it’s too actiony, too grandiose and fast paced but yet well acted by fine performers who all fit their respective parts perfectly. And true to motion picture form for wider audiences generally conclude in a spectacular finish to the film.
Of course you turn a blind eye to the fact that the online revisions of Trek have long drawn out plots with questionable writing and acting that deal with magic mudrooms, red angles and a re-retread of Data death that all have season endings that conclude in some form of massive fleet attack..very predictably “safe” conclusions with flashy special effects. But you’ll ignore that.
Also ignoring that the show runner was the same guy that help guile the JJ verse.
And he actually did a slightly better job of it the these inept all access stuff.
And really as you all know Jj won’t be having much of a say in any future Trek films.
No blind eyes here. I hate stupid no matter where it shows up. All of the modern versions of Trek have had an extra bit of extra-stupid layered on to which I’ve chalked up to directors wanting “cool” and not giving a crap if it directly contradicted established lore or was just technically bad in the grand scheme of things (i.e. lens flares, transport between solar systems, holographic displays, and every bedroom is a holodeck, etc.).
The examples you give aren’t awful things if they service a decent and successful movie though. No casual viewer or critic would care unless they noticeably strain the credulity of the world they establish. And they don’t, even if we know a reliable long range transporter is not even a thing in Picard’s time.
I do not love the Kelvin universe, but I think the details people get hung up on are very unfair – there is no other franchise besides Doctor Who and soap operas that not only rivals Star Trek in age but in having an unbroken line of continuity. It is incredibly restrictive to try and force every story detail through the filter of, “Don’t contradict 500+ hours of lore across nearly 800 episodes and 13 movies, or else!” If any of us were hired to be the continuity naysayer, we’d be reviled in short order unless we were really creative and collaborative about how stories could be made and still fit. This is why most IPs reboot completely, and Trek did halfway.
Now, things like Picard’s clone going on a mission to irradiate Earth, magic blood, and Kirk kicking the Enterprise into being repaired before dying just so Spock can yell “Khan!” ARE dumb and unoriginal, but they draw attention to the original films doing things smarter and better, nothing to do with whether or now a sacred continuity detail has been violated. That kind of thing just can’t get us bogged down or the weight of it will stifle the entire franchise and no one new will ever want to try it out for a spin.
Just give him the money Paramount.
I would like to see a Star Trek movie involving the casts from the Kelvin Universe, Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, and Lower Decks.
I wanted the 4th Star Trek reboot to happen. But not as a rushed into production to meet a release date film. Too many Treks have been made before they had the right script. And the whole reason with the 4th being canceled over whatever they were paying Pine was ridiculous. Pay him his agreed to salary and get on with it. The Kirk meets his dad story was just bad, do something else. Beyond was heading in the right direction with almost perfect chemistry in the cast. Bring back Jaylah, bring back Carol Marcus from Into Darkness. Do a bold story exploring new worlds and situations. Show the Enterprise A on its five year mission. The question is who will direct it.
Beyond was rushed into production and was considered a critical and commercial dud relative to the other Kelvin films, so hopefully Paramount will avoid doing that again.
Critically it still did very well. Slightly worse than Into Darkness, bizarrely, but the Trek fan audience I would say liked it better, certainly.
Amen!
Very well said!
No more JJ trek. The movies help start the divide that killed Star Trek as franchise. I like Pune but no more Reboots and prequels. Do some new Star Trek that’s faithful to both TNG and Classic Trek. Other stop.
.. ummm didn’t he walk off from this or perhaps this is just his way of starting negotiations back up
I enjoyed their films, but that was before Trek really came back. Time to move on, this is another timeline and served its purpose.
Pine is tired of riding the pine; he wants to go climb a rock.
My take is that with everything practically “on hiatus”, many of these actors and production crews will be looking for work, Pine and company included. That might mean a bargain basement situation. Then again, the studios are hurting, too, so they might not even afford even a decent actor. But, we’ll see…
I wouldn’t be surprised if the big studios stick even more to big-budget franchises with a proven track record where they can hope for a billion dollar or more from one single production. These will probably get priority when things start back up.
Instead of taking risks with smaller films that may fail or, even if they succeed, only bring in small amounts of money.
I might be wrong though.
The headline for the article could have been written without the words “on ‘Star Trek 4,'” and it would be at least as true. // I’d watch more Kelvin Trek, but I find myself more interested in SNW….
i like pine. good actor. great kirk. but also a little bland in other roles IMO. the saint? i like a lot of moves paramount is making now that they are getting organized but the saint seems like a mistake. but what discovery movie? i wanna hear about that
All the talk of a new cast for Star Trek 4! WHAT?!!!!!! Are you kidding?! The casting for the Pine Star Treks were PERFECT!!!! How can they abandon that team after a MERE 3 movies???!!! Is it just arrogance with the producers to want to produce just something new for the sake of new?? To stamp their name on it? I have no idea, but this cast is absolutely marvelous. Keep the cast, just make sure the writing is up to their marvelous Trek-like abilities!!!!!!!!!!