Star Trek Movies Deepfake Trailer Puts William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy Into the Reboot Series

Classic Star Trek stars William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley join the reboot movies in a new deepfake fan trailer. Fans have used deepfake technology to pull off some impressive Star Trek swaps in the past, but this trailer from Futuring Machine may be the most impressive yet. Presented as the trailer for a film titled Star Trek: The First Generation, it uses footage from the Star Trek: The Original Series movies to show James T. Kirk retelling a story from his youth. The video then deepfakes Shatner's Kirk onto Chris Pine's and Nimoy's Spock onto Zachary Quinto's to show the characters' younger years with scenes from Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond. You can watch the fan trailer above.

The future of the Star Trek film series is on hold as Paramount Pictures formulates a release strategy. Noah Hawley's project was on its way towards pre-production, most recently, going as far as to hire designers. The film would have introduced a new Starfleet crew. Paramount has since put the movie into "stasis," reportedly due to its story involving a virus, resulting in an unfortunate parallel with the coronavirus pandemic.

"We're not doing Kirk and we're not doing Picard," Hawley said in an interview. "It's a start from scratch that then allows us to do what we did with Fargo, where for the first three hours you go, 'Oh, it really has nothing to do with the movie,' and then you find the money. So you reward the audience with a thing that they love."

Hawley has said that his movie would challenge the Federation's ideals. He also said his film would be of a different tone than the Kelvin timeline movies.

"What I love about Star Trek is that it's not a war story. It's not a story in which might makes right," Hawley said. "It's a story about exploration. It's a story about creative problem solving. My favorite moment in all of Star Trek is in Wrath of Khan when Kirk puts on his reading glasses to lower Khan's shields. It's a brief moment that is so exhilarating because he's using the best tool he has, which is his mind. As much as I like the Chris Pine movies they were mostly about running from one end of the ship to the other to put out a fire, to stop a thing, and then before he could catch his breath he had to do something else. They're much more action movies and what I wanted to get back to was this idea of humanity justifying existence in the universe by showing its best qualities."

Hawley's Star Trek movie is one of three potential Star Trek films in the works. Another, the original pitch for Star Trek 4, involves time travel and Captain Kirk's father. The third comes from an idea by Quentin Tarantino and is inspired by the gangster-themed Star Trek episode "A Piece of the Action." A script exists based on Tarantino's pitch, though Tarantino has since distanced himself from directing the movie.

(h/t Trek Movie)