Paramount Pictures' decision to bring back the cast of the Kelvin Star Trek franchise for Star Trek 4 was reportedly determined by market research. J.J Abrams rebooted the Star Trek franchise in 2009, recasting the iconic characters from the original series with stars Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho, and Anton Yelchin, in an alternate reality dubbed The Kelvin Timeline. The film was a smash hit and spawned two sequels, 2013's Star Trek into Darkness and 2016's Star Trek Beyond.
Star Trek 4 was originally announced before the release of Star Trek Beyond, however, the latter's underperformance at the box office and a pay disagreement between the studio and star Pine caused the production to be stalled. Over the years, Paramount Pictures has tried to relaunch the Star Trek 4 project with a wide array of pitches from different filmmakers, but progress appeared to be made when WandaVision director Matt Shakman signed on to helm the project with a December 23, 2023 release date. Now, Paramount Pictures has announced the original 2009 Star Trek cast will return, with the exception of Anton Yelchin, who tragically passed away on June 19, 2016, just a month before the release of Star Trek: Beyond.
According to Variety, Paramount's decision to bring back the cast of the previous three Star Trek films came down to market research. The studio had spent years exploring other options and, given the major gap in time since the release of Star Trek: Beyond, coupled with the film's poor box-office performance, the studio reconsidered the financial viability of bringing back the original cast. It appears though Paramount executives determined that there was still lasting audience enthusiasm for the cast in their established Star Trek roles, which allowed the studio to feel comfortable with entering talks to bring Pine and his co-stars back.
With a 2023 release, the next Star Trek film will be arriving seven years after the release of Star Trek Beyond. While some franchises have taken long gaps off (such as James Bond, which was forced into a six-year hiatus between Spectre and No Time to Die due to COVID-19 delays), it is unusual for a modern franchise to take such a long gap. Part of the reason for the delay has been the cast's busy schedules over the years, with many of them booking high profile projects, like Pine with both Wonder Woman and Dungeons and Dragons, Zoe Saldaña with Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy and the Avatar sequels, and Simon Pegg in the Mission: Impossible franchise.
Sony recently saw great success bringing back both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man: No Way Home as the film played with audiences' nostalgia for those incarnations of the character, so it is possible that Paramount is hoping to create a similar outcome with Star Trek 4. Not only are the actors popular in other properties outside of Star Trek, but the cast and its incarnation of the iconic characters captured the interest of an entirely new generation of fans. The cast return is a welcome and fitting one, and if the research pans out and Star Trek 4 is a box office hit, there is always a chance the cast will return for more movies, and the crew of the Kelvin Timeline will have as many film appearances as the cast of the original Star Trek series.
Source: Variety