While there are those who feel that Paramount’s rebooted Star Trek movies aren’t entirely dependent on Chris Pine, it’s fair to say that they just wouldn’t be the same without him. As the beating heart of the series, it’d be a pretty big shock if the studio made a fourth installment without the actor, but that’s now the situation they might be facing given that he’s walked away from the project due to a salary dispute.
Ditto for Chris Hemsworth, who joined his fellow Chris in departing the next Trek film after Paramount wouldn’t pay the actors what they’d previously agreed upon. That’s not to say things have ground to a halt, though; the studio’s still interested in doing a fourth outing in the Kelvin timeline, they’re just not ready to share any firm details about what comes next for the USS Enterprise crew – just ask John Cho.
And while it remains to be seen what happens with Pine and Hemsworth, we’re catching wind of some interesting news today which seems to suggest that Megan Fox is up for a role in the film. The actress, who has a long relationship with Paramount given her involvement in the Transformers series, not to mention the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, shared a story on Instagram earlier which saw her sitting beside the aforementioned Cho.
She then layered a Next Generation logo on top of it, tagged it with @StarTrek and following that, the official Twitter account for Star Trek Re-Tweeted a fan who’d shared the photo. It’s hard to say exactly what this all means, and whether or not it’s just the actress having some fun, but seeing as she’s certainly someone that Paramount enjoys working with, it could indicate she’s up for a role in the fourth film in their rebooted series.
— Star Trek (@StarTrek) October 31, 2018
Then again, this could mean nothing at all, and with Star Trek 4 still in development limbo, it’d be strange for the studio to be casting additional roles when they don’t even know if they’ll have their leading man back on board. You’d think that’d be the first priority for them, but who knows?
Regardless, Paramount’s fourth Star Trek movie sounds like it’s but a collection of ideas pinned to a whiteboard at this point, though with Discovery season 2 headed our way quite soon, Trekkies can at least look forward to being acquainted with a totally new version of Spock.