Brian Fuller will Showrun New Star Trek TV Series

Bryan Fuller’s next gig will be a return to the Star Trek franchise that kickstarted his writing career. He wrote for Deep Space Nine and Voyager and will now return to be the showrunner on the new series for CBS.

Fuller is joined by Alex Kurtzman and Heather Kadin as executive producers for CBS Television Studios on Star Trek, which will air on CBS’s proprietary digital service, CBS All Access, after airing only the pilot on TV. It’s the first series they’ve developed exclusively for the service.

Fuller is also showrunning American Gods, the Starz adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel. Previously, he’s worked on, created, and/or run Wonderfalls, Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, Heroes (first season), and most recently Hannibal.

Fuller showed his excitement on twitter, along with his dedication to the brand, by offering an image of himself dressed in a Star Trek uniform:

“My very first experience of ‘Star Trek’ is my oldest brother turning off all the lights in the house and flying his model of a D7 Class Klingon Battle Cruiser through the darkened halls,” Fuller said in a press release. “Before seeing a frame of the television series, the ‘Star Trek’ universe lit my imagination on fire. It is without exaggeration a dream come true to be crafting a brand-new iteration of ‘Star Trek’ with fellow franchise alum Alex Kurtzman and boldly going where no ‘Star Trek’ series has gone before.”

Kurtzman echoed his fellow EP’s enthusiasm.

“Bringing ‘Star Trek’ back to television means returning it to its roots, and for years those roots flourished under Bryan’s devoted care. His encyclopedic knowledge of ‘Trek’ canon is surpassed only by his love for Gene Roddenberry’s optimistic future, a vision that continues to guide us as we explore strange new worlds,” he said.

The series will run concurrently with the film series, the next of which, Star Trek Beyond, will hit theaters in 2016, prior to the 2017 launch of the new Star Trek TV series. It’s not yet known whether the two will interact in anyway, or even exist in the same time and space, but Kurtzman’s involvement with both the film series and TV series seems to point that way (though he’s not directly involved with Beyond).

The announcement of the new series, and its showrunner, comes in the 50th anniversary year of the Star Trek franchise created by Gene Roddenberry.

“For the past 50 years, ‘Star Trek’ has been a groundbreaking franchise that not only changed the landscape of television, but made a significant impact on pop culture,” said David Stapf, President, CBS Television Studios. “When we began discussions about the series returning to television, we immediately knew that Bryan Fuller would be the ideal person to work alongside Alex Kurtzman to create a fresh and authentic take on this classic and timeless series. Bryan is not only an extremely gifted writer, but a genuine fan of ‘Star Trek.’ Having someone at the helm with his gravitas who also understands and appreciates the significance of the franchise and the worldwide fan base was essential to us.”