Officially, Paramount is developing a fourth and final Star Trek movie set in the Kelvin Universe in parallel with an “origin movie” for the franchise. And once again, we have a member of the Kelvin cast weighing in on what they would like to see from this potential sequel to 2016’s Star Trek Beyond. This time it’s Simon Pegg, who was also the co-writer of that last film.
Pegg doesn’t want dark and gritty Trek
While promoting Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, his sixth time in that Paramount film franchise, Simon Pegg has talked a bit about Star Trek. He participated in a “Does Simon Pegg know his lines?” game with Variety, and when they tested him with some Scotty dialogue from Star Trek Into Darkness, the actor and writer used that as an opportunity to talk about the Trek franchise, starting with an update:
“I’d love to do a fourth movie. There’s always kind of mutterings about it. I’ve never heard anything to suggest we’re gonna do one.”
This comment is consistent with what we have been hearing from his costars, including Chris Pine, Zoe Saldaña and Zachary Quinto—namely that they are keen to do another Star Trek film but are generally in the dark about if or when that would happen.
With Variety, Pegg then opined about what he would like to see for the next Kelvin movie in context of other modern films:
“These days, everything becomes very gritty. And I think it’s this weird kind of justification of ‘How do we make this thing, which is essentially quite youthful?’ Although I would argue that the original Star Trek series wasn’t childish. It was actually quite sophisticated. Things don’t have to be gritty and dark to be for adults. Science fiction doesn’t have to be full of death and swearing and questionable morals to be consumed by adults. It just has to be thoughtful and imaginative. I’d like to see Star Trek kind of get back to the spirit of The Original Series a little bit. And get out there on that five-year mission, although we’ve completed our five-year mission. So if we did another one, it’ll be interested to see what we do next.”
After years of false starts on a “Star Trek 4” movie, Paramount pivoted to set a franchise “origin movie” directed by Toby Haynes as the next Trek movie, with the next Kelvin movie to follow. The “origin” movie was officially announced as part of Paramount’s 2026 slate. However, at their Cinemacon presentation about upcoming films in April, the studio made no mention of that or any Star Trek film. So for now, the waiting game for the next Star Trek movie continues, with the added complication of waiting on the potential Paramount merger with Skydance (who partnered with Paramount on the previous Kelvin movies). The merger was set to finalize by the end of the summer, but that, like the Trek movies, has been running into complications.
