Alex Kurtzman seems to think that any new Star Trek film *HAS* to connect to his television series on Paramount+. That means that if Kurtzman has the kind of pull everyone thinks he does, then there is no way a fourth Star Trek Kelvin film will ever happen. Speaking to Variety, Kurtzman leveled fans who were hoping for two separate but shared Star Trek universes when he basically said “nah” to the idea of that ever working.
"I think vertical alignment has made it so that it’s impossible not to accept the reality that the line between movies and television is gone. It doesn’t mean that you can’t have a feature that is separate from television. But if they aren’t connected in some way, then you’re basically running two universes parallel as opposed to interconnected, and I think that those messages could potentially cancel each other out."
This is hogwash. It’s basically him and everyone else following the Disneyfication of Hollywood. Everyone and everything needs to have an infinite number of connections and have to be interwoven so you can understand the entire plot.
It’s the Hollywood version of microtransactions. Why make someone only buy a movie ticket, when you can also tack on years of subscriptions, comics, podcasts, and additional movies to watch in order to follow the entire plot.
Making the movie part of the series universe will only turn away more fans who have skipped the more recent series. If you have to watch the film to watch the series or vise versa, you’re not going to be able to get a lot of people invested. After all, when everyone is turning their stand-alone properties into massive and expansive universes, then people are going to find themselves less likely to invest that much time in something considering all the other content that is currently out there.
Kurtzman has said before that he hopes the films and series come together and that very well may now happen thanks in part due to Paramount+ and ViacomCBS having narrowed their focus on what they want the next film project to be.
What it is still isn’t known to the greater populous and fans probably won’t know the plot or the characters probably for some time. If the film is going to follow the idea of the more recent series, it’ll probably be something that will inevitably split the fanbase.
Here’s hoping the film can stan on its own.