The last “Star Trek” feature film released in theaters was “Star Trek Beyond” back in 2016. The movie was directed by Justin Lin, the filmmaker behind “Better Luck Tomorrow” and several of the “Fast and Furious” movies, and it was co-written by Simon Pegg, who also played Scotty in the film. “Beyond,” the third film in the Kelvin timeline, was … pretty good. The action was clear and the character work was solid — the entire cast brought their A-games — but the film overall was generic action nonsense; it was the fourth “Star Trek” film in a row about a twisted villain on a mission of revenge. Sadly, “Beyond” wasn’t as big a hit as Paramount wanted, and it seemed to be the end of the road for “Star Trek” in theaters.
Ever since, though, Paramount has been persistently struggling to make a fourth “Star Trek” movie set in the Kelvin timeline. As of this writing, some new plans are afoot to finally make said film along with a prequel movie set at an earlier point in the “Star Trek” timeline. Given how many false starts there have been on “Star Trek 4,” however, one will simply have to bide their time to see if anything comes to fruition
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In an interview with Katee Sackhoff on “The Sackhoff Show,” Pegg talked a little bit about his “Star Trek” experiences. In doing so, he admitted he has a hard time imagining “Star Trek 4” ever getting made, seeing as it would be “tainted” by Yelchin’s absence.
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“I’d love to do more. Obviously, it’s been forever tainted because we lost Anton, and that was a really hard thing for everyone involved, and for the real world, let alone anything else. If we do come back, if there is another opportunity to come back, I’d love to. Because as we were saying earlier on, it’s a group of guys that I dearly, dearly love and don’t get to see very often […] It would be good to get back together with them.”
I don’t think I’ll ever understand this current obsession with the death of an actor meaning the death of a character. It’s acting. The whole point is that multiple people can play the role over the years. The only thousands of people have played Romeo? Just get another actor. Tons of rolls have been recast. It’s fine. I’m sure that actor did a fine job in the role but it’s not like he was the only the first one to play the role, someone else can take over. We’ve seen other people that were all before and it’s fine.