Red alert! Captain Jean-Luc Picard may be travelling at warp speed back to space: the final frontier right at this very moment.

The Hollywood Reporter claimed on Tuesday (June 19) that Sir Patrick Stewart is attached to a brand new Star Trek series in development at CBS that will see him reprise his Next Generation role as Picard.

The project is reportedly one of several Star Trek series and miniseries that are being developed by Star Trek: Discovery showrunner Alex Kurtzman as part of his newly-signed multi-year production pact with CBS.

CBS via Getty Images

THR notes that the Picard series is in very early development, and might not happen at all, so it's probably best that fans of The Next Generation don't get their hopes up for a return of the Holodeck quite yet. CBS isn't commenting at this stage.

Sir Patrick did recently hint at a possible comeback to the franchise when asked by Red Carpet News if he'd been watching Star Trek: Discovery.

"You mean the series, not the movie, because there is a new movie due out very soon," he answered. "No, I haven't [seen it], but I may have good cause to look at it very soon."

Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Hamptons International Film Festival

Stewart last played the Captain of the USS Enterprise in Star Trek: Nemesis, the 2002 blockbuster that finished the film series that spun off from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Last December, the 77-year-old actor said he'd only agree to play Picard again if the Star Trek creative team came to him with a "brilliant" idea.

"One thing that might interest me would be to bring all the existing casts of Star Trek from the last 50 years together for one big story," he said at the time.

Was that an inadvertent hint about what's in store for fans? Make it so, Alex Kurtzman...

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