Star Trek Composer Says Noah Hawley’s Movie Would Make Fans Lose Their Minds

In 2020, news surfaced that Legion creator Noah Hawley would write and direct a Star Trek movie for Paramount Pictures, and apparently, it would have been mind-blowing. The film has since been put into stasis while Paramount moves forward with other Star Trek film projects. Composer Jeff Russo — whose work includes Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, and working with Hawley on Legion and Fargo — had already spoken to Hawley about writing music for the movie. He says that, while the story was still distinctly Star Trek, it would have had a profound and powerful effect on Star Trek fans who saw it.

“I would say it was not all that different,” Russo tells TrekMovie. “I mean it was different in its voice because Noah has a voice – his writing voice. So in that way, it may have had a different feel. But it was a very Star Trek story. And it was a very interesting way to tell that Star Trek story, which is what made me so excited about it and had me inspired to write music already for it. The way he explained it to me made me feel like the fans are going to lose their mind. It literally felt like that, to me. Lose their mind… I read the script and my call to him was the fans are going to lose their mind, because of just what the story was.”

Russo goes on to clarify that when he says fan would lose their minds, “I would say in a good way. Because it would have been telling a story that they hadn’t heard, that hadn’t been done in a way that would have been very fulfilling. Finding out answers to questions that have never been answered.”

Russo’s comments track with the rumors circulating about the film. Those rumors suggest the film would have introduced a brand new Starfleet crew and challenged the fundamental tenets of the United Federation of Planets.

ComicBook.com spoke to Russo in 2020 for an interview covering his work with Hawley and working for the Star Trek franchise. Though the news was fresh at the time, he seemed excited to see those two sides of his career collide.

“We have had conversations about what it might sound like, what it might be, what he’s thinking,” Russo said regarding Hawley and his Star Trek movie. “Nothing is set in stone right now. The movie is still in development and still being written and there are lots of pieces that need to get put into place, so who knows what’s going to happen? But Noah and I are our close friends as well and we talk about music all the time and talk about that and talk about the Star Trek that I’m already doing and we talk about that and right now we’re working on Fargo so there’s always talk about that. This was two people who are artistic talking about what the possibilities are for what the new Star Trek movie could sound like or could have in it or could be.”

The next Star Trek movie opens in theaters on June 9, 2023.