13 Star Trek Pitches Out There (And Where They're At)

13. STAR TREK 4 (KELVIN)

*kelvin 4 cast beyond 2016
Paramount Pictures

Unlike Star Trek 4’s development hell, let’s be brief. Apparently, the hoped-for fourth and final installment of the Chris Pine-led alternate Kelvin timeline film series was seen by Paramount’s new owners as simply past its prime now (no pun intended). It’s a dead project. 

Amazing to think now that it began, typically, as the next follow-up to Beyond, way back in 2017, with a time-loop story where father and son Kirk teamed up, from writers JD Payne and Patrick McKay; director SJ Clarkson was hired in April 2018. But when Chinese backers exited the film’s financing in 2018 and Pine & Chris Helmsworth declined to lower their contracted salaries because of it, cash-strapped Paramount said it could no longer afford to do a story with both their characters.

That began the stall and a parade of names involved, including director Matt Shakman of WandaVision aboard in 2021-22 until delays caused him to shift to Marvel’s Fantastic Four. Yet another Kelvin script from writer Steve Yockey was on the board for a year before this newest Paramount regime finally pulled the plug in November 2025.

Status: DEAD

Contributor
Contributor

Back when nerds and geeks were just called "hobbyists," Larry's ninth-grade science teacher ended a bewildering conversations with him about Halkans by finally saying, "Oh Larry — don't tell me you don't know Star Trek!"— along with a commandment to go home and begins watching the daily after-school rerun. The rest is history — well, future history, anyway. Larry had always been a NASA kid and a history fan (not so much sci-fi), so Star Trek fit right in: for the phenomenon that was worldbuilding before the term was invented, Larry felt passion-called to take up "backgrounding" and gap-filling before the term "retcon" was invented. Star Trek is fun and inspiring, but it doesn't pay the bills —at least in those days— but after college and work in theatre and print news, Larry somehow managed to combine both fields with his non-fiction Trek fandom and created the monster that today is Dr. Trek. His self-published, pre-Internet star charts and TNG Concordance were precursors to the official Stellar Cartography map set and the bestseller TNG Companion, after a move to Hollywood /SoCal in the 1990s boom years. Add in a stint as managing editor of official ST Communicator magazine, the first editor and later content producer of the original startrek.com, and the franchise consultant for everything from the Star Trek World Tour to the storied Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas. When Star Trek went wandering in the wilderness for the first time in 18 years amid the "Paramount divorce" of 2005-06, so did Larry — until, finally, the entrepreneur web world eventually found a path and a way to stay afloat. Since then, Larry's "Trekland" has come to mean more media projects and podcast/streaming alongside the old standbys like convention guest speaking and even text writing. Sure, there's The Trek Files for Roddenberry, his own Trekland Tuesdays Live, and Dr. Trek;s Second Opinion reaction shows — but that passion for spotlighting and archiving the creatives of Trek across all arenas and eras still drives him to pioneer experiences like the monthly backstage Portal 47 features, and the Trekland Treks day tours of Trek location sights. And now ... in-depth Dr. Trek turns for TrekCulture, too!