Star Trek 4 Is Moving Forward; Chris Pine And The Rest Of The Original Cast Set To Return

The latest Star Trek film — Star Trek: Beyond — has been released in 2016. Now, six years later (now I feel old), Paramount is finally moving forward with the fourth installment of this reboot series that kicked off in 2009 with the movie Star Trek, directed by J.J. Abrams and starring Chris Pine.

As Variety reported, J.J. Abrams made the announcement on Paramount Investors Day that Star Trek 4 is moving forward, with Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, John Cho, and Simon Pegg all planned for a comeback.

“We are thrilled to say that we are hard at work on a new ‘Star Trek’ film that will be shooting by the end of the year that will be featuring our original cast and some new characters that I think are going to be really fun and exciting and help take ‘Star Trek’ into areas that you’ve just never seen before. We’re thrilled about this film, we have a bunch of other stories that we’re talking about that we think will be really exciting, so can’t wait for you to see what we’re cooking up. But until then, live long and prosper.” — J.J. Abrams

Abrams directed the original reboot movie which was released in 2009, and the sequel Star Trek Into Darkness, which was released in 2013. The threequel, directed by Fast & Furious director Justin Lin, was released in 2016. J.J. Abrams didn’t direct the threequel due to his work on Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which was released a year before. Abrams is producing this upcoming fourth film, with Matt Shakman, known for the work on Marvel Disney+ series WandaVison, set to direct. Josh Friedman and Cameron Squires, who also worked on WandaVision, are serving as screenwriters.

In this reboot movie series, Chris Pine was playing James T. Kirk, Zachary Quinto played Spock, and Zoe Saldana took the role of Nyota Uhura. Star Trek Into Darkness is commercially the most successful film of the movie trilogy, with $467 million grossed worldwide, while the first movie and Beyond grossed $385 and $343 million, respectively.