Hot of the presses from Variety, it looks like Paramount Pictures’ long gestating Star Trek 4 has found itself a new writer. Steve Yockey, widely know as the co-creator of the brilliant The Flight Attendant, has reportedly picked up writing duties for the latest J.J. Abrams produced Star Trek film.
According to the trade, Paramount and Bad Robot still intend the project to be the final chapter for the cast that rebooted the franchise way back with 2009’s Star Trek, including Chris Pine (as Capt. James T. Kirk), Zachary Quinto (as Cmdr. Spock), Zoe Saldaña (as Lt. Nyota Uhura), Karl Urban (as Dr. Leonard McCoy), John Cho (as Lt. Hikaru Sulu) and Simon Pegg (as chief engineer Montgomery Scott).
It has been widely reported that the studio has at least three previous attempts to bring the cast together that has fallen apart for various reasons. Most recently the studio banked on director Matt Shakman (WandaVision) and screenwriters Lindsey Beer (Sierra Burgess Is a Loser) and Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Captain Marvel) to reignite the big screen franchise. Shakman has since moved on to Marvel Studios’ Fantastic Four.
Yockey bag his TV career on the MTV series Awkward and Scream, before moving on to the writing staff of Supernatural for four seasons. His next project, the Sandman universe adaptation Dead Boy Detectives, will premiere in April 2024 on Netflix.
Paramount is also developing a separate Trek project, with writer Seth Grahame-Smith (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) and director by Toby Haynes (Black Mirror: USS Callister), which is planned to feature a new cast in a story meant as a kind of origin story for the franchise. A project with screenwriter Kalinda Vazquez (Fear the Walking Dead) first announced in 2021 also remains in development.
