Star Trek is at a bit of a crossroads, with both Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy ending after their next seasons and no new live-action or animated series currently greenlit. While it may seem like the iconic franchise has taken a bit of a backseat at Paramount, streaming executives remain committed to ensuring it has a future.
"Well, it’s one of the reasons why Chris [Parnell] is here as the resident number one fan of the Star Trek franchise," Jane Wiseman, EVP & Head of Originals for Paramount+, told Deadline when asked about the streaming future of Star Trek.
Chris Parnell, the former Apple TV+ creative executive and co-president of Sony Pictures Television Studios, joined Paramount+ last year, with expanding the streamer’s Star Trek original content among his goals.
While Paramount may not have anything concrete to announce just yet, Wiseman reassured fans that the company remains committed to delivering a successful future for Star Trek.
"And there’s so many people in this building, by the way, that are," Wiseman continued. "It is our goal and it is our job to figure out what the next bounce of Star Trek is. We’re talking to a lot of writers, we are leaning on CBS Studios, and it is imperative that we figure out what the next iteration is in this franchise because it’s just too important. We also are in touch with Paramount Pictures, they have a Star Trek movie that’s in development."
Despite celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, Star Trek has seemingly faced one piece of disappointing news after another. With Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy both coming to an end, the franchise is now facing the possibility of having no new series in the pipeline for the first time in nearly a decade.
Paramount hasn't publicly addressed the situation in detail, but reports have pointed to a combination of factors, including a corporate reset following the Skydance merger, potential franchise fatigue, questions about the audience performance of some recent series, uncertainty surrounding Alex Kurtzman — the architect of the modern Star Trek television universe — and a broader rethink of what the future of the franchise should look like.
It's not all doom and gloom though. In April, Paramount CEO David Ellison confirmed that a new Star Trek movie is in development with Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley writing, directing, and producing it. At San DIego Comic-Con in July, they revealed it will be set "a little further into the future than we've been before."
In the meantime, we've got Season 4 of Strange New Worlds underway, with its fifth and final season already filmed. And while Starfleet Academy didn't quite break through with mainstream audiences, there's still one more season of the series to come, which has also finished filming.