Star Trek: Chris Hemsworth Returns for Next Sequel
Last week, Star Trek film producer J.J. Abrams hinted at what was next in store for the film franchise, and today Paramount Pictures officially announced details on the new story for the film that’s slated to follow next week’s Star Trek Beyond, which is the third film in the rebooted live-action Star Trek film franchise. Per the announcement, Paramount, Skydance and Bad Robot all revealed that Chris Hemsworth will return in the fourth movie as George Kirk, the father of Chris Pine’s Captain James Tiberius Kirk.
The sequel will feature the return of the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise in another epic, big screen adventure. The story will feature Captain Kirk (Pine) crossing paths with his father, a man he never had the chance to meet but whose legacy has haunted him since the day he was born. In the 2009 Star Trek picture, George Kirk perished when his ship, the Kelvin, was attacked by rogue Romulans from the future led by Nero. Kirk was forced to stay behind to man the ship in order to give the surviving crew members, including his pregnant wife, time to escape. Kirk was literally born and named as Nero directed the Kelvin to crash into Nero’s vessel.
The remaining cast from the previous films is expected to return for the sequel. Sadly, Anton Yelchin, the actor behind Pavel Chekov for the last three movies, recently past away.
The new sequel will feature J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay writing the screenplay, with J.J. Abrams and Lindsey Weber producing the project for Bad Robot Productions. David Ellison and Dana Goldberg are executive producing the pic under the Skydance banner.
The third film in the franchise, Star Trek Beyond, hits theaters on July 22. It will be interesting to see how the box office performance turns out on the sequel. Obviously, Paramount is very confident on Beyond’s performance to announce a fourth film before the third is even out yet. However, sometimes such movies have backfired, like in the case of the announced Terminator trilogy of which Terminator Genisys was supposed to the first film for. 20th Century Fox also announced a release date for the 2015 Fantastic Four flop before that movie was released. Ultimately, a sequel is not going to materialize.