If you’re a Star Trek fan who’s been eagerly awaiting the next big screen installment after 2016’s Star Trek: Beyond, your long wait may be winding down. It was announced in November of last year that Legion showrunner Noah Hawley would write and direct Paramount’s fourth Star Trek film, with franchise stalwart JJ Abrams on board to produce. Now, as Hawley’s commitments to FX’s Fargo are wrapping up, he’s setting phasers to 'direct a new film' for Star Trek.
Hawley told Deadline that, as soon as Fargo season four wraps, he’ll be launching into Star Trek “as soon as possible.” However, his film may go in a new direction from the previous three films – in fact, it may very well not feature the younger iterations of The Original Series’s characters. That said, the new direction might not be new at all – in fact, it might be a return to form for a groundbreaking franchise often described as “the UN in space.”
Hawley said of his vision:
“I have my own take on Star Trek, and going back to what I loved about the series Next Generation, when a lot of franchises focus on ‘might makes right,’ Star Trek is about exploration and humanity at its best, and diversity and creative problem solving. There’s nothing better than that moment when William Shatner puts on his reading glasses and lowers Khan’s shields. It doesn’t cost anything. But it’s that triumphant feeling about smarting your enemy. For me it’s about to getting to those elements of the show. I don’t necessarily find action in and of itself interesting unless it’s story. So, it’s early days, I’m still talking with Paramount and I have a take and I gotta write a script.”
As for the Star Trek universe in play over at CBS All Access’ Star Trek: Discovery, Hawley isn’t certain his universe will intersect. However, he’s eager to connect with showrunner Alex Kurtzmann.
“I know Alex,” Hawley said. “There isn’t a mandate from Paramount to connect it. And on some levels, there’s a bit of the wall, the TV version and the film version. I have my own story and want to make sure as I did with Fargo and Legion that I’m respectful to the underlying material. That I’m not unintentionally changing things that people love or feel passionate about. So, it’s important to do that research as I go.”
Meanwhile, interest remains in the long-rumoured Quentin Tarantino Star Trek film, which would be the director’s tenth and allegedly final film. Paramount is reportedly working on this separate spin-off of the franchise, with Tarantino eyeing to direct an R-rated script written by Mark L Smith, the screenwriter behind The Revenant.
Even as the studio wheels begin to turn on Hawley’s Star Trek, with the script still unwritten, a release date is a long way off. Until then, live long and prosper.
Adrienne Westenfeld is the Books and Fiction Editor at Esquire, where she oversees books coverage, edits fiction, and curates the Esquire Book Club.
