Star Trek 4 wants you to try and kick the football again, but be better than Charlie Brown

Star Trek 4’s screenwriter says the movie is on track but we’ve seen this spot before, haven’t we, Charlie Brown?

We all know the story, Lucy holds the football, tells Charlie Brown to kick the ball, and assures him she won’t move it. He runs, she moves it, and he biffs it hard. That silly boy refuses to learn but we, as a fandom, should very much do the opposite of Brown. We should stop believing when Paramount or anyone associated with Star Trek tells us Star Trek 4 is coming.

In this new era of media, where whole films like Batgirl could be completed and then never released, no one should believe anything about Star Trek 4 happening until the end credits roll. Seriously, until the movie has been viewed in its entirety in a movie theater, just assume it’s not happening.

In a recent interview with Collider, original Star Trek 4 scriptwriter, Lindsey Anderson Beer, told the outlet that Star Trek 4 is in fact happening. It’s “on the tracks”. On the tracks? To what? In 2022 the folks at Paramount announced it as happening and told everyone the cast was returning. The cast didn’t even have a contract yet, let alone the numbers agreed to and officially signed.

The film didn’t have a script, and it still doesn’t have one. The director, Matt Shakman, bailed on the project to go with the far more stable and not-at-all controversial MCU and its film, the Fantastic Four, which as best we know, hasn’t started any tangible work yet.

Why did Shakman leave a project that was in no way going to interfere with another? Because it wasn’t going to happen, at least not without a lot of needless headaches.

Star Trek 4 is likely not happening and we should all accept it

There are a lot of reasons to like a fourth film in this franchise but there are just too many reasons for it to not happen. The misery the film’s production has delivered is enormous. The ups and downs, and we haven’t even had to deal with any hard questions; like does the production crew recast Anton Yelchin’s Pavel Chekov, or do they kill off the character? Yelchin passed away nearly seven years ago, which coincides with the release of the last Trek film.

It’d be hard to justify either option, as Chekov is a key character in the franchise but Yelchin was so perfect in the role, how do you justify a new face and voice bringing that character to life? It’s not a decision we’d like to make.

We’re well over seven years since the last offering of Star Trek hit the theaters, and there doesn’t seem like much of an appetite for a new film. If there’s anything left in these characters, maybe the best bet is to is to turn it into a mini-series, and close out the Kelvin timeline once and for all; and never revisit it.