A couple of geek friendly franchises – James Bond and Doctor Who – have recently turned 50 years old to much fanfare. The next series to reach that milestone will be Star Trek in 2016. Presumably Paramount is already looking at big plans to celebrate the science-fiction series reaching the half-century mark and a third installment in their big screen reboot of the original classic television series may be one of the things under consideration.
Trek film producer Bryan Burk hinted as much in a conversation with Digital Spy –
Digital Spy: Given that the Gene Roddenberry series debuted in 1966 and we’ve just had a huge Bond 50-year anniversary celebration – has Paramount been talking to you about making a 2016 release date for the next Star Trek film?
Bryan Burk: We’re definitely talking about the next one, but we haven’t talked about a release date. We don’t want to wait four years, the same amount of time between the last one and this one, but it’s going to be a big year to celebrate, hopefully.
Now understandably there are a few things which will affect plans to have the film into theaters in 2016. First and formost will be the search for a director. Given that franchise reboot helmer J J Abrams is off to work similar magic on Disney’s Star Wars: Episode VII, I severly doubt that he would be able to split his time between Star Wars and working on the development of a third Star Trek film. And that’s giving him the benefit of the doubt that Episode VII would even hit its announced release year of 2015, which Abrams was not sure about.
If Paramount is serious about getting Star Trek 3 into theaters in 2016, they will have to find themselves a new director. Will Abrams have a say in that search? Time will tell, though if he retains a producer’s credit on Trek 3, like he did with the Mission: Impossible franchise after Brad Bird slipped into the director’s chair after Abrams, than I wouldn’t be surprised if we see someone like Bird or Cloverfield‘s Matt Reeves step up to the job.
