Simon Pegg reveals heartbreaking reason Star Trek 4 may not happen

The new Star Trek movies haven’t been the smash hits the studio was hoping for, they did provide some fun to audiences but a fourth appears unlikely.

Simon Pegg doesn’t feel a fourth movie with this current cast is very likely and after speaking to Collider, one can’t argue with his observations. Sometimes things are taken out of one’s control and you can’t really help it. That’s the situation that Star Trek cast, crew, and fans came to accept when the untimely passing of Anton Yelchin in 2016, just about a month before Star Trek: Beyond premiered in theaters.

Yelchin played the iconic Pavel Chekov, and his loss leaves a gaping hole impossible to fill. Something Pegg noted in the interview;

"One thing I did mention when I spoke about it recently is that for us, losing Anton Yelchin the way we did was a real blow. And I think it slightly took the wind out of our sails in terms of our enthusiasm to do another one, just because we’re now missing one of our family. He would be conspicuous by his absence."

Just because a fourth film may not happen, that doesn’t mean the cast has grown apart. Pegg revealed in the same interview that the group still routinely keeps in contact with one another, showing the deep respect they have. A further peek behind the curtain on how hard it would be for them to do another movie without Yelchin.

"We’re all still in contact, we were emailing with each other the other day, just checking in, ‘how are we,’ and stuff. But it’s not like any of us have been banging on the door at Paramount saying, ‘Hey, when are we doing this?’ If they say, ‘We’d like to do another movie,’ I’m sure we’ll all jump at the chance. I miss those guys, and I love making those films. But I just don’t know. Noah Hawley’s project has been mentioned, and maybe that will happen. I don’t know anything about that. So yeah, I’m as in the dark as everyone else, I’m in the same boat as you guys."

Pegg ultimately surmised that due to the Star Trek films low appeal rate, and how they’re niche properties, that a fourth film also seems unlikely from a logistical end as well. He did note that if they’re called to action they would leap at the chance but no one is campaigning for it.

He then went on to note that maybe the best place for Trek is on television (streaming services), to be better able to conduct long-form storytelling.

"Maybe TV is a better place for [Star Trek] now. Television has evolved so much. It’s become something which is very much a contemporary, a peer of cinema. It’s simply viewed in a different way. It isn’t a reduced scope anymore. You can still do masses of interesting things, and it can still look modern and not inexpensive. Maybe television is a better format for Star Trek. That’s where it started, you know."

Would you want to see a fourth Star Trek film with the crew and do you feel that television is perhaps the better format for stories involving Star Trek?