Patrick Stewart-obsessive James McAvoy reveals he pitched a "young Picard" Star Trek show

This is per Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, where McAvoy, slightly sheepishly, revealed that he’d put together a pitch for Paramount for a project called Mutiny On The Stargazer, rooted in an incident taking place in the Star Trek: The Next Generation hero’s well-documented backstory. “I’ve got a whole story about an early Picard,” McAvoy told Horowitz, claiming it’s still kicking around in his head even now: “I love that story, and go to bed and think about it at night.” Saying that his pitch to the Trek studio fell apart due to “logistical issues,” he still asserts that the project almost happened; clearly deep in the throes of a nerd fugue, the actor added that the story would have taken place when Picard took over his first command after his captain was killed, and would have revealed a “secret he’s been holding for his entire career.”

McAvoy has spoken/joked in the past about playing Picard, owing (you’d assume!) to his job portraying a young version of Stewart in the X-Men franchise. But this makes it clear that such ideas are not just a funny question for a talk show interviewer to ask, but the sort of thing that actually lives inside his head, full-time; when McAvoy says “All I really want to do in my career is play young versions of Patrick,” it sounds surprisingly genuine. (Not that that’s as far as his sci-fi ambitions go, by the way; elsewhere in the interview, he expresses genuine disappointment at never having gotten to do a Star Wars film, saying Disney “availability checked” him for the franchise years ago, but never actually sealed the deal.)