Star Trek’s future sounds very much in doubt
As Edgar Allen Poe once said, “Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see”. Poe said these iconic words in the short story called “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether”, and the idea was to not believe the hype around gossip. This is never more true than when talking about people in the media with something to sell.
Far too often people will take someone at their word when they give an interview, and won’t take external factors into consideration when looking at what people say. After all, they have something to sell, and they want you to buy it. So why would they be honest when it could hurt their bottom line?
That’s the mindset I want you to have when you hear what Alex Kurtzman is saying about the future of the Star Trek streaming franchises. In a conversation with SFX Magazine (via TrekMovie.com), the head of Trek made it known that there are “plans for new things” but that’s all he can tell us.
"[W]e have plans for new things… there’s quite a few plans, and you’ll hear about them soon. We will continue to expand the Star Trek universe, absolutely."
Star Trek’s future is murky even if we’re not being told that
This is despite Paramount+ canceling two Star Trek shows already while cutting costs across the service to other shows. Paramount+ has existed, essentially, for nearly a decade and has never turned a profit (previously CBS All-Access), and they’re still not expected to turn a profit for several years if projections stay true.
Keep in mind that this streaming service has failed to meet projections pretty regularly.
While we’re told one thing, behavior shows us another. There have not been any new Trek shows put into production in years. There haven’t been any new announcements for shows in years. We keep getting told things are in the works, but all we actually are seeing is shows getting canceled. What you do is more important than what you say.
So when Kurtzman goes on to say things are coming, we don’t buy it. It’s very likely that the franchise had plans to do a bunch of television series, but due to budget cuts, Kurtzman and the company are now looking at doing films and mini-series due to the financial failings of the franchise and the streaming service.