The Kelvin Timeline movies gave Star Trek a fresh spark back in 2009, launching a new era with a modern style, a strong ensemble led by Chris Pine, and impressive theatrical momentum.
For a while, it felt like the Enterprise was back for good. But after Star Trek Beyond arrived in 2016, the film side of the franchise slipped into a long silence.
TV kept the flame alive on Paramount+, but the big screen has been empty for nine years. During that quiet stretch, a completely different Star Trek movie was not only pitched by Noah Hawley but moved into pre production before being shut down at the last moment.
Now, hearing what Hawley had planned stings even more.
During a guest appearance on the SmartLess podcast, Noah Hawley explained how he got involved and what kind of story he wanted to tell. After finishing Lucy in the Sky, he wanted to take on something larger and landed on Star Trek because it offered something other franchises don’t.
“I signed on, you know, after Lucy in the Sky; I thought, ‘Oh, I like this movie thing. I’d like to do another one, but I think maybe I’d like to try something a little bigger.
“You know it’s all franchises and I thought, yeah, but everything’s war, right? Star Wars is war, and Marvel is war. But Star Trek isn’t war. Star Trek is exploration, right? It’s people solving problems by being smarter than the other guy.”
Hawley’s take leaned into the intellect and creativity that define the franchise at its best. He pointed to one of the most memorable moments from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to illustrate that spirit.
“The best moment from Star Trek is in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan where Shatner puts on his reading glasses and lowers the shields on the other ship. It costs like 45 cents, right? But it’s like, you see, ‘oh, he’s smarter than Khan’.
“And so I went in, I talked to Paramount, I sold them this original idea. It wasn’t Chris Pine, it wasn’t anything. I wrote it, they said, ‘We love it, let’s prep it.’ We were, you know… I was going to move to Australia, we were booking stages.”
This wasn’t a half formed pitch. It was a fully written script with a new cast, an original premise, and a studio that seemed ready to take off with it.
Just as the project was gearing up to shoot, leadership changes at Paramount derailed the entire plan. Hawley shared:
“And then, as happens in Hollywood, Jim Gianopulos, who was running the studio at the time, he’s like, ‘I’m going to bring in somebody else under me, and they’re going to take over the film studio.
“And the first thing they did was kill the original Star Trek movie because they said, ‘Well, how do we know people are going to like it?’ Like, ‘Shouldn’t we do a transition movie from Chris Pine[’s cast], play it safe, you know, whatever?’. And so it kind of went away.”
You gotta love the stupidity of studio executives. A unique, ready to shoot movie was dropped because the studio wanted something familiar. The heartbreaking twist is that the “safe” option never happened either.
Nothing materialized with Pine’s crew, and instead of a transition film or Hawley’s fresh approach, fans got nothing on the big screen at all.
Hawley’s track record speaks for itself. Legion pushed superhero storytelling into surreal psychological territory. Alien: Earth has earned praise for its high concept world building. He’s the kind of filmmaker who can reinvent established properties without breaking what people love about them. The way he describes Star Trek shows how well he understands why it stands apart from other sci fi giants.
Rather than leaning on spectacle, his movie would have brought the franchise back to thoughtful exploration and clever problem solving. Knowing that this was the direction he intended makes the cancellation feel even more painful in hindsight.
Hawley isn’t ready to let go of that script, and he made that clear, saying: “I mean, I talked to David Ellison recently. And I was like, ‘You still haven’t made a Star Trek movie. I’m just saying it’s in there. I love it.”
With David Ellison and Skydance now leading Paramount, there is a slim but real chance this project could be revived. The script exists, the filmmaker is still enthusiastic, and the franchise could benefit from a fresh theatrical direction that focuses on imagination instead of safer repetition.
For fans who’ve been waiting nearly a decade for the next movie, learning how close this one came to reality feels rough. But knowing it still sits on the table offers a little hope that someday the Enterprise might return to the big screen in a way that truly honors what makes Star Trek special.
As of right now, there’s a Star Trek film being developed Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley are set to write, produce, and direct a completely new Star Trek film, one that’s not tied to any previous movies, series, or development projects.
