'Star Trek 4': Simon Pegg Is Not Writing a Script

It turns out that Star Trek Beyond writers Simon Pegg and Doug Jung are not writing a script for [...]

It turns out that Star Trek Beyond writers Simon Pegg and Doug Jung are not writing a script for the sequel after all.

Last week, Star Trek star Zachary Quinto discussed the development of the sequel. He hinted that there may be up to three different versions of the script being written, and specifically said that Pegg and Jung were writing one of them.

It seems Quinto was confused because Pegg clarified in an interview with Happy Sad Confused that he and his writing partner are not writing a script for Star Trek 4 and that they never were.

"Doug [Jung] and I were never going to write the fourth [Star Trek]," Pegg said. "That was never the deal. Doug and I are doing something together at Bad Robot, which I probably can't talk about just yet. So, [J.D.] Payne and [Patrick] McKay, who wrote the abortive third [Star Trek] script with the previous director [Roberto Orci], they are writing a fourth one. That as far as I knew was the kind of [Chris] Hemsworth thing. That is as much as I know."

To clarify what Pegg is saying, JD Payne and Patrick McKay were originally writing the script for the third Kelving timeline Star Trek movie, which became Star Trek Beyond, when it was set to be directed by Roberto Orci. Paramount Pictures decided to go another way and hired Justin Lin to direct Beyond from a new script written by Pegg and Jung.

Before Star Trek Beyond opened in theaters, Paramount announced Star Trek 4 would be written by Payne and McKay and that Chris Hemsworth would return as George Kirk, Captain James Kirk's father who died in the opening scenes of 2009's Star Trek movie.

While Paramount has slowed down develop on Star Trek 4 to reconsider its options after the disappointing box office performance of Star Trek Beyond, Pegg previously noted that there is a script that exists that predates the script that Mark L. Smith is working on based on the Star Trek movie pitch that Quentin Tarantino made to JJ Abrams. This was seemingly a reference to Payne and McKay's originally announced script.

So where does that leave Star Trek fans? We know that one script exists, and that script was written by Payne and McKay and that its story involves George Kirk. We know that Mark L. Smith is working on a script for a pitch written by Quentin Tarantino, though nothing is known about the actual premise of that pitch. If a third script exists, and it is currently not clear that one does, it was not written by Pegg and Jung.

Are you disappointed that Pegg and Jung won't write Star Trek 4? Tell us how you feel in the comments!

The first three Kelvin timeline Star Trek movies - Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond - are all available now on home media.

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