Posted in: Movies, Paramount+, TV | Tagged: star trek

Star Trek: "Extraordinary Honor" Joining Paramount Franchise: Kinberg

Executive producer/writer Simon Kinberg (Invasion) spoke with Bleeding Cool about joining Paramount's Star Trek franchise universe.

Simon Kinberg is certainly no stranger to the realm of science fiction and tentpole franchises given his involvement in shaping 20th Century's X-Men cinematic universe, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005), Disney/Lucasfilm's Star Wars: Rebels, Warner Bros. Sherlock Holmes (2009), Sony's and xXx: State of the Union (2005). While promoting his AppleTV+ sci-fi drama series Invasion, Kinberg spoke to Bleeding Cool about working in the Star Trek franchise. While his involvement was traced back to 2024, Skydance finally purchased Paramount and announced updates on a slew of the studio's biggest IPs, which include the Gene Roddenberry-created franchise, currently splintered on the film and TV sides. While the untitled fourth Star Trek film has gone through development hell, the studio announced Andor director Toby Haynes helming the project with Seth Grahame Smith and Steve Yockey writing, Kinberg and Kelvin Universe creator J.J. Abrams producing.

Producer and Writer Simon Kinberg on Joining the Star Trek Family

How does it feel to be a part of the Star Trek family and the creative process?

It's an extraordinary honor to be involved in Star Trek. It's something that I grew up watching that my dad passed down to me. He's passed away, but I'm sure he'd be very proud that I'm involved. It's a fascinating world because of all the different tendrils it now has. Alex Kurtzman has done such a wonderful job with television shows and obviously people before him as well, so it's cool, and it's a new world.

While Kinberg predominantly worked in film, he co-created Star Wars: Rebels with Carrie Beck and Dave Filoni for Disney and co-developed the 2019 Paramount+ incarnation of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone with Jordan Peele and Marco Ramirez. On the TV side of Trek, there are two active live-action shows, Strange New Worlds and the upcoming Starfleet Academy, but that could change soon as Skydance settles in.

As there have been series proposals from Picard's Terry Matalas and Enterprise's Michael Sussman, Paramount's remained mum on the franchise's future beyond the aforementioned active projects, and this doesn't even get into what will happened to the animated series Prodigy, which was never officially canceled after two seasons, but remains in limbo with the licensing set to expire on Netflix. As far as how full Kinberg's plate is, there are six upcoming projects he's attached to on the writing side, including his ties to write a new Star Wars trilogy and a remake of Logan's Run, among others. Invasion season three, which stars Golshifteh Farahani, Shamier Anderson, Shioli Kutsuna, Billy Barratt, Azhy Robertson, and Tara Moayedi, premieres on August 22nd on AppleTV+.

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