For 30 years — from 1979 to 2009 — the longest wait between new Star Trek feature films was seven years. And, for most of that period, from the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) to Star Trek: Nemesis (2002), there was almost always a new Star Trek movie in theaters every two to four years. But after the wildly successful J.J. Abrams-directed reboot film in 2009, the release clip for Trek movies went from maximum warp to impulse power, to glacially slow. And now, by the time the next Star Trek movie hits theaters, it will have been about 10 years since the previous one — Star Trek Beyond — beamed into cinemas in 2016.
Since that time, for Trekkies, updates of a new Star Trek film have been very similar to the game football Lucy plays with Charlie Brown; just when a hypothetical movie sounds real, it gets snatched away. But now, there’s a glimmer of hope. Thanks to reports out of CinemaCon 2024, it looks like, the next Trek film is scheduled for release in either 2025 or 2026. But what’s it about? And will it really happen?
Star Trek 14 is “an untitled origin story”
The new “origin story” will be set before the 2009 reboot. But how many decades before?
During CinemaCon 2024, Paramount confirmed several in-development projects including a live-action GI Joe/Transformers crossover (teased in 2023’s Rise of the Beasts), a hardcore Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live-action movie, a remake of the sci-fi thriller The Running Man (from Edgar Wright), the confirmation of an Avatar trilogy, and the assertion that a new Star Trek feature film will go into production this year, with a release date soon to follow.
Since 2016 to now, there have been at least five different attempts to make a new Star Trek film, either as timey wimey direct sequel to Beyond (“Star Trek 4”) a one-off space mobster movie (Quentin Tarantino’s script) or something else entirely (Noah Hawley and Matt Shakman’s attempts that remain undisclosed). But now, although Paramount is reportedly developing a sequel to Beyond — which would feature the reboot cast from the 2009 film one last time — the next Star Trek movie is not that sequel, but instead, as previously reported, an “origin story” that “takes place decades before the 2009 Star Trek film that rebooted the franchise.” This movie has been confirmed to be directed by Toby Haynes (Andor, Doctor Who) with a script from Seth Grahame-Smith (The Lego Batman Movie, Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter).
Wait? Wasn’t the 2009 film an “origin story?” While the answer to this question is technically a “yes,” the 2009 film (just titled Star Trek) was also partially a time-travel sequel to the canon established in The Next Generation, and literally everything else in the Trek franchise up until that point. By saying the new prequel film takes place “decades before” the first reboot, this could hypothetically mean that the movie takes place in both the Prime and Kelvin timelines simultaneously.
TLDR: The Trek timeline diverged in the first reboot movie, beginning in the year 2233, so, a story set even a few decades before that divergence, in the 2210s or 2220s or earlier, would be consistent with all versions of Trek's future history. Presumably, the “origin story” won’t take place in the two decades between the prologue of the 2009 film (2233) and the main story (2258), because honestly, even for hardcore Trekkies that’s a big canon headache. So, sometime in the early 2200s, but before the 2230s is probably the best bet. And, even if the movie was set a bit earlier than that — say in the late 2180s or 2190s — we’d still be dealing with a very early point of Starfleet history that has never been depicted and that we know almost nothing about. Hence, if you squint — and don’t think about the prequel series Enterprise (2151-2161) too much — then yes, we’re looking at an origin story in which pretty much anything could happen.
Star Trek “origin” movie release date
One of the earliest shots of the USS Enterprise — from the 1964 Star Trek pilot episode “The Cage.” The new prequel film will likely be set half a century before this moment.
While some tweets out of CinemaCon seemed to indicate that the new Star Trek movie could hit next year in 2025, TrekMovie confirmed that the “Untitled Star Trek Origin Story,” is on the Paramount slate for 2025 or 2026. TrekMovie also predicted that 2026 is more likely, writing, “If Paramount can move fast enough they could get the origin movie into theaters by 2026 — in time for Star Trek’s 60th anniversary.” Then again, 2025 is not impossible, it’s just cutting it a little close.
It should also be noted that the entire corporate entity of Paramount is reportedly close to a merger that would see it purchased by Skydance Media, the same production company behind the three existing J.J. Abrams-produced Star Trek reboots. If that deal is finalized soon, then, yes, this Star Trek feature film might actually happen very quickly. And if it doesn’t, there will still be plenty of new Star Trek shows streaming, not to mention the first direct-to-streaming standalone Star Trek movie, Section 31, starring Michelle Yeoh, which will hit Paramount+ sometime later this year.
All the reboot Star Trek films (2009-2016) are currently streaming on Paramount+. The previous ten films (1979-2002) are all on Max.
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