Noah Hawley’s Sinister Revelation: The Actor Responsible for Paramount Killing His Star Trek Movie

Before Noah Hawley could turn his Star Trek dream into reality, Paramount dumped it because of one star's prior association to the franchise?

Before the recent success that creator Noah Hawley experienced with Alien: Earth, he was on board with the process of creating a new Star Trek project for Paramount. Unfortunately, after the recent Paramount Skydance merger, that project was completely scrapped. In an episode of the SmartLess podcast, he talked about how the last reboot films were one of the reasons, saying:

And then, you know, as happens in Hollywood, Jim Gianopulos, who was running the studio at the time, he’s like, ‘I’m going to bring in somebody else under me, and they’re going to take over the film studio.’ And the first thing they did was kill the original Star Trek movie because they said, ‘Well, how do we know people are going to like it? Like, you know, ‘Shouldn’t we do a transition movie from Chris Pine[’s cast], play it safe, you know, whatever? And it kind of went away.

As stated by Hawley, the reboot films, featuring actor Chris Pine in the lead role, were relatively commercial successes, but still had many points of contention that held them back. But at the same time, Hawley had the vision to solve that problem with his pitched project.

Noah Hawley’s Star Trek Idea Was Loyal to the Franchise’s Core

As stated earlier, right before Hawley was about to start the production of his project, a new creative team was brought in by the new executives, who were eyeing to give the franchise a fresh start. This was finally confirmed by recent reports, where the director duo of Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley will be helming the new Star Trek films.

But you listen to the Alien: Earth creator’s idea, and you realise just how much he understood the core of the franchise. In the same podcast episode, Hawley explained how, unlike Star Wars and the MCU, Star Trek is more about the adventure and experience, rather than a grand cosmic strife between good and bad. He said:

You know it’s all franchises and I thought, yeah, but everything’s war, right? Star Wars is war, and Marvel is war. But Star Trek isn’t war. Star Trek is exploration, right? It’s people solving problems by being smarter than the other guy.

Thus, his attempt with his now-cancelled project was to bring that essence of the original series back into it, which would’ve taken Star Trek back to its roots. This would also have proved to be the much-needed change that Paramount was looking for from the last reboot trilogy.

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The Star Trek Reboot Films Focused Too Much on Visual Spectacles

As Hawley pointed out, Star Trek had always been about the wits and intellect of its characters who use them to solve impossible problems they face along the way. The classic series focused more on topics such as morality, diplomacy, and scientific curiosity than anything else.

These were aspects that were either missing or extremely muted in the reboot series, where the emphasis was more on the visual aspect of turmoil and odds faced by the characters. This meant the production took a more Star Wars-like approach with the narrative, showing over-the-top action sequences and confrontations.

This, in turn, made the films nothing more than a sterile Hollywood blockbuster, which didn’t resemble the Star Trek that people grew up with, negatively impacting the legacy of the franchise.

Here’s more information on the Star Trek reboot films.

Did you like the Star Trek reboot films, or did you like Hawley’s idea? Tell us in the comments below.

The Star Trek reboot films are available to stream on Paramount+ (US).