The creator of the hit FX shows ‘Fargo’ and ‘Legion‘ has been tapped to bring his unique vision to ‘Star Trek’. Noah Hawley will write and direct the next movie in the “Kelvin” series. J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot will produce, as it has for the last three. Hawley’s 26 Keys is also producing.
Hawley made his film directing debut earlier this year with the Natalie Portman astronaut drama ‘Lucy in the Sky‘. Unfortunately, it was blasted by critics, with its Rotten Tomatoes score at a lousy 21%, and didn’t make much of a ripple at the box office. Fortunately, his TV work has been much more successful, with him having won an Emmy and various other awards for ‘Fargo’.
Last April, S.J. Clarkson was touted as the first woman tapped to helm a ‘Star Trek’ movie. Plans were for the film to use the existing script by Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne which reportedly involved time travel and would have included Kirk’s father George, played by Chris Hemsworth.
RELATED: Noah Hawley Doesn’t Sound Hopeful About His ‘Doctor Doom’ Movie
Ready for some Space Tea? That project fell apart because the two Chrises, Pine and Hemsworth, wanted too much money. But the problem is that the ‘Trek’ franchise has been on a steady decline following the success of the first movie in 2009. ‘Into Darkness‘ was considerably less successful, both financially and critically, and ‘Beyond’ did even worse. While Paramount wanted to make another movie, costs had to be cut because these movies were making less and less money with each installment.
But since the contracts for the entire cast had been fulfilled, Pine and his co-stars were now able to negotiate for bigger paychecks. Hemsworth was not under contract, as he only made a brief cameo in ‘Star Trek’.
Hawley is reportedly tossing out that entire script, so it’s safe to assume that George Kirk won’t factor into his new story. According to Variety, Pine, Zachary Quinto (Spock), Zoe Saldana (Uhura), and Karl Urban (Bones) are expected to return. There has been no mention of Simon Pegg (Scotty) or John Cho (Sulu). Cho recently seriously injured himself while filming his Netflix show ‘Cowboy Bebop‘, and his recovery is expected to take several months, after which he will return to film that series. Anton Yelchin (Chekov) died in 2016.
This project is completely separate from the proposed film that Quentin Tarantino may or may not make.
Are you interested in another big-screen ‘Star Trek’ movie? What do you think of Hawley directing?
