New ‘Star Trek’ movie will be set decades before the era of Kirk and Spock

More news is trickling in about the newest Star Trek movie coming from Paramount. We already know that the film will be set decades before the first Star Trek film in 2009; however, there's some question as to whether it will even be set in the Kelvin timeline at all.

Though the film will be produced by J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot, we don't have confirmation if that means it will go back to the time of George Kirk (James T. Kirk's father). Indiewire has also speculated that this could mean a return to the original timeline with the events set after Star Trek: Enterprise where we would actually see the founding of the United Federation of Planets.

It would be a good call to explore the 100 years between Captain Jonathan Archer's Enterprise and Captain Pike's Enterprise as we haven't seen much of what happened in that time period. We know things that have been established in canon, but there is so much we haven't seen.

With the fourth movie in the Kelvin Timeline having such issues coming to the screen, will Paramount really greenlight an essentially fifth movie in that time period? Granted, it would have all new characters, but bringing Star Trek 4 to fruition has been an exercise in futility so far even if we have been assured it's still in the works.

Revisiting an earlier time period before Captain Kirk might actually be a good thing, and with the success of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, it would make sense for the studio to want to explore that timeline more. What would be fantastic would be a movie with Captain April at the helm of the Enterprise, which we've never seen. Hopefully, we'll get more detailed information before First Contact Day as no one really wants to wait that long to learn exactly what this film is all about.