Chris Pine and Simon Pegg better wait a bit before trying on their Starfleet uniforms again, because Star Trek 4 director Noah Hawley—of Legion and Fargo fame—is suggesting that his movie will be more of a “new direction” than a straightforward sequel. This comes from a chat with Collider, where he explained that his project is “still early,” at least “in terms of who exactly would be in it or what the characters would be.” He also says that he’s not thinking of it as “Star Trek 4,” reiterating that it will be a “new” thing for him and the series.
This is pretty much the opposite of what was said back in November when Hawley joined the project, with those initial reports saying he would follow the timeline established in the J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot and retain the same cast that has been in those movies, but there is something nicely poetic about another filmmaker coming on to an Abrams space movie and saying “Nah, I’m going to ignore all of the stuff you did and just do what I want.” Maybe it’ll turn out that Captain Kirk’s dad was actually some nobody and not Chris Hemsworth? And maybe we’ll find out that Starfleet is actually for everyone and not just the special few who happen to be born into famous families? The movie sounds pretty far off, so we won’t know for a while, but we do know that this one is coming before the Quentin Tarantino Star Trek movie (because that one will never happen).