New Star Trek Movie Writers Tease “Dark” Story About “Bad Apples” In Starfleet
John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein's in-progress Trek film is a very big swing.
Since 2016, Star Trek fans have probably felt a bit like Charlie Brown on Thanksgiving. The football is the promise of a new theatrical film, which is pulled away at the last minute, seemingly every single time. But now, filmmakers John Francis Daley and Johnathan Goldstein seem to be making progress, and if and when their ambitious new Star Trek film materializes, it sounds like it could be like nothing else we’ve seen before.
In the same way that Nicholas Meyer redefined Star Trek with The Wrath of Khan, or Gene Roddenberry took a big risk by introducing an all-new cast of characters in 1987 with The Next Generation, the Daley and Goldstein script for the untitled new Star Trek movie promises to be another brave, new take on the venerable sci-fi franchise, one that the filmmakers think shouldn’t require any previous Trekkie fandom knowledge.
Speaking to Inverse about their new comedy/action film Mayday — starring Ryan Reynolds and Sir Kenneth Branagh — Daley and Goldstein took time to shed a little more light on what their Star Trek script will be like, while also confirming one major aspect: This movie will feature all-new Star Trek characters.
Unpacking Starfleet in a new way
“I would say it's really kind of a look at the institution of Starfleet and any institution as a whole that has existed for a long time and what that does,” Daley tells Inverse. “ I think the portrayal of Starfleet and the people that work within it have always been generally idealized versions of what the future could be. And while this [script] isn’t a cynical or nihilistic take on it, I think it does acknowledge that there are some bad apples in every institution that can have a strong voice and can really make an impact on that institution and everything it stands for.”
“Two movies we cite as comps for what we’re hoping to do are Training Day and Crimson Tide,” Goldstein tells Inverse.
“It takes place almost in real time, and it just is a whole other look at what a Star Trek movie could be without betraying the fundamentals of what it should be,” Daley adds.
Fans of the excellent film Crimson Tide will probably remember that, interestingly, that film has more than one reference to the original Star Trek.
Daley and Goldstein hope to launch a “new franchise” for Star Trek
Because the new film is in development (not in production, to be clear) as a theatrical film, the filmmakers note the promise of a large “spectacle” is crucial to delivering not just what fans expect, but to bring in a whole new audience of fans who may or may not already care about Star Trek.
“With the advent of truly cinematic television, I think the challenge then is to have it justify its place as a feature, a theatrical feature that in a perfect world is on the biggest screens possible,” Daley says. “And that requires looking at it in a sort of larger sense than any kind of television show could do. It’s definitely something that we are hyper-cognizant of as well. There has to be a spectacle to it.”
The filmmakers also note that their hope with this film is to make something that lives well beyond the expectations and borders of existing fandom. “I mean, look, we don't want to rely on fandom,” Goldstein says. “We don't want to just hope that there's enough fans of the original [TOS] or The Next Generation or whatever who will turn out for this. We want to just make a great movie that lives in the world that people are familiar with — some people are familiar with — and that others will discover. And then, with good fortune, we launch a new franchise into existence.”
