Paramount is again attempting to boldly go where it’s gone 13 times before. The studio has been struggling with launching its next Star Trek film, but it has now tapped Star Trek: Discovery writer and Fear the Walking Dead co-executive producer Kalinda Vazquez to write a new screenplay for a new Star Trek movie. This is reportedly a “blind deal,” meaning there’s no screenplay yet but Vazquez has hatched an idea for what the film will be about.
Kalinda Vazquez is on quite the upward trajectory after recently being tapped to team with George R.R. Martin on HBO’s upcoming adaptation of Roger Zelazny’s sci-fi novel, Roadmarks. She’s had a relatively long career in TV writing and producing, working not only on the third season of Star Trek: Discovery but also Marvel’s Runaways, Once Upon a Time, Nikita, and Prison Break. She also evidently comes from a lineage of Trek fans, being named after Kelinda, an alien being called a Kelvan who appeared in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “By Any Other Name.” Her work on the third season of Discovery, which was probably its strongest, seems to have endeared her to the powers that be at Paramount and JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot, which is producing the film.
It’s not clear if this will be another Star Trek reboot movie or will continue on with the cast of the Kelvin timeline, which stars Chris Pine as Captain Kirk. The studio has been struggling to get anything off the ground since Star Trek Beyond released in 2016, even at one point having Quentin Tarantino lined up to write/direct the next film. With the success the studio is having on streaming with the franchise and its heavy focus on Star Trek content in its rebranding to Paramount+, it’s obviously very important for them to get more films going.
