Star Trek Origin Story Movie Slated for 2025, Starts Filming This Year

The next theatrically-released Star Trek movie is set to begin filming this fall, with plans to debut in 2025. Paramount Pictures CEO Brian Robbins announced the news during Thursday's Paramount Pictures CinemaCon panel. While the studio is developing multiple Star Trek films, the next to begin shooting is the origin story movie with Toby Haynes directing. The movie is said to be set decades before 2009's Star Trek movie, which created the splinter timeline. in which the sequels Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond also take place. This raises some questions about the exact nature of the film's plot, but Paramount is keeping those details secret for now.

Seth Grahame-Smith, who worked on Star Trek Beyond, is writing the new Star Trek movie's script. Haynes rose to prominence with his work on sci-fi television shows like Doctor Who, Black Mirror, and the Star Wars series Andor.

What about Star Trek 4?

Star Trek 4 is still also in development as the final chapter of the Star Trek reboot saga with the Enterprise crew played by Chris Pine, Zoe Saldana, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, and John Cho (and, previously, the late Anton Yelchin).  That film hasn't yet found a director to replace Matt Shakman, who was attached before departing to direct Marvel's Fantastic Four reboot.

"I had a great time working on 'Star Trek' for a little over a year, working closely with J.J. Abrams and everyone at Paramount, and I love that franchise, and I love that cast that J.J. put together, and it would have been an unbelievable pleasure to work with them on the fourth installment there," Shakman said during an interview with The Wrap. "But movies have different journeys and momentums and schedules are a little bit mercurial, and so when the 'Fantastic Four' opportunity came up, it was just too hard to pass up, and to go back home to Marvel, a place that I worked on 'WandaVision' at, with those people who are wonderful collaborators. It's really a family there and to be able to go back and tackle something that I truly love, and they're very similar in some ways: they both were launched in the '60s at the same time, they're both about optimism and looking to the stars and technology can solve everything and they're about family too — the family you have, the family you make. So they're aligned in many ways and speak to my heart and equally, so I'm excited to be working on 'Fantastic Four.'"  

Lyndsey Anderson Beer, one of the film's writers, also departed the project to focus on another film, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines. "I wrote a couple drafts of that before I had to leave for Pet Sematary. And it was originally, the seed of the idea came from J.J. himself, who's such a creatively generous person, and it was amazing collaborating with him," Anderson Beer shared with ComicBook.com of leaving Star Trek 4. "And it was very sad to leave our Zoom sessions to focus on [Pet Sematary: Bloodlines], but this was my baby, so I had to prioritize."

Paramount+ is also producing its own straight-to-streaming Star Trek movies. The first, Star Trek: Section 31, recently wrapped filming.