We were all excited when it was announced that the Kelvin timeline would continue with the upcoming fourth installment of the Star Trek franchise. Paramount was celebrating its rebranding in style with a batch of announcements during its investor day, which included the confirmation that the original cast is in talks to return. Well, it turns out that they may have fibbed a little, as in a new piece by The Hollywood Reporter we learn that the cast had no clue. Most of the USS Enterprise actors’ rep teams had not heard of an announcement for a fourth entry and that there were even talks for them to join.
What makes this such a surprise is that the film is already eyeing a production start by the end of the year, which puts Paramount in a rather uncomfortable place to negotiate if they are trying to hit their theatrical release on December 22nd. They do reveal that the first negotiations will start with Chris Pine, as he’s the “lynchpin to the project.” The script isn’t even finalized and there’s no word on an actual green light or budget. It seems that they dropped their leverage to court Wall Steet investors. We’ll see if this hurts them in the long-term due to how giving up this leverage may inflate the film’s overall budget.
It’s certainly a power move by Paramount to try and prioritize Wall Street investors over the talent for its film. They’ve been using the franchise to further develop Paramount+, as they try to make use of their existing IPs to compete with Netflix and Disney+. Discovery, Picard, and Lower Decks have been instrumental in their strategy with more spinoffs already in development. So, it would seem strange that they’d not prioritize these negotiations in advance, but we’ll see what it might mean for the films moving forward.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
