Noah Hawley Opens Up About His Star Trek Future

The big screen fate of Star Trek has been up in the air for several years now. Ever since the threequel Star Trek: Beyond underperformed at the box office in 2016, it seems that paramount has been at a loss for how to move forward.

The most prominent rumor was that a script from the one-and-only Quentin Tarantino would be used to for the fourth film. Story had it that the plot would be much more adult in nature. Many speculated it could possibly even be R-rated. It seems execs at Paramount wanted to push Star Trek into a new and unexplored territory. There was even hope that the auteur director would sign up to direct. And while these rumors were substantiated, the project quickly fizzled as Tarantino grew disinterested and moved on.

This, however, wasn’t the only exciting possibility. Around the same time, “Fargo” and “Legion” series creator Noah Hawley was linked to the franchise. There was little information provided, other than news that he was at work on a new theatrical version.

Recently, Hawley sat down with Deadline about the finale of the latest season of Fargo. During the interview he was asked about his involvement with the Star Trek universe, now that Paramount was under new management. He responded that:

“It [Star Trek] doesn’t appear to be in my immediate future. I think when Emma came in, she took a look at the franchise and wanted to go in a different direction with it. But you know, life is long, we were very close to production but in this business that doesn’t mean much. You got to get out of the gate to be in the race if you know what I mean.

It’s interesting to hear that Hawley’s version of Star Trek was “very close to production” and it appears he put a significant amount of work in. Even so, that film is now on the back burner and it’s seems clear, at least from Hawley’s perspective, that there is little chance of it ever coming to fruition.