Star Trek Origins movie is further along in production than the Star Trek 4 movie

More news is coming in about the new Star Trek movie that will, most likely, take place outside the Kelvin timeline. The Toby Haynes directed film, that is supposed to take place decades before the era of Spock and Kirk, is, according to Variety [via Trekmovie] "further along" than Star Trek 4. That shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone since Star Trek 4 has been spinning its wheels for years now.

Even further along, though, means the movie could potentially get up and running this year. In fact, according to studio insiders, the movie is "on track to start preproduction by the end of the year." That's a big change from what's happening with Star Trek 4, which continues to struggle, although it did recently tap "The Flight Attendant" creator Steve Yockey as its new screenwriter.

There's some speculation as to how far back this Origins movie will go, but with Star Trek: Enterprise having established the first lift-off of the Enterprise, there's a limited area to pull from. But it's sounding more and more like this film is intended to be the start of everything Trek as Variety reports that "the project will serve as an origin story of sorts for the main timeline of the entire franchise."

How that will work is anybody's guess as a story set decades before Captain Kirk's time is still going to have to take place after Enterprise unless the movie intends to delve into the pre-warp time. So we'd still get the starships, but they'd all be at slower speeds and not really going very far. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.