This is some cool news that came out early this weekend. Variety came out with a report that S.J. Clarkson will helm the currently untitled Star Trek 4 film, which is following 2016’s Star Trek Beyond. And with her hiring, she becomes the very first female director to take on a Star Trek film.
It’s undoubtedly a historic move, but one that is almost embarrassing in that it took this long in the near 40 years we’ve had Star Trek films for this to finally happen. She has one film to her credit, which is 2010’s Toast, but it’s really in television where she thrived having worked on projects since 1999 with British and American shows like Doctors, Life on Mars, Dexter, Orange is the New Black, Jessica Jones, The Defenders, and Mistresses (which she co-created).
As for the film itself, there are no new plot details aside from the one thing we already sort of know (even if it’s technically unconfirmed), which is that time travel is a major element, bringing back Chris Hemsworth to the series as Kirk’s father, who he very briefly played in the 2009 reboot.
The film is being written by J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, who are no strangers to the series, as they wrote the very first draft of Star Trek Beyond with Roberto Orci before it was eventually rewritten by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung.
And it’s worth noting that this film has nothing to do with the Star Trek project that J.J. Abrams and Quentin Tarantino are working on. That is a film Paramount is developing at the same time as this, but plans to release after the fourth film by Clarkson.
A release date for Star Trek 4 has not been set yet. I’ll keep you updated as more info comes out.