Patrick Stewart is returning to Star Trek as Jean-Luc Picard and plans to stick around for a while.

Stewart is out promoting his latest film, The Kid Who Would Be King. While on the red carpet in London he was asked about the possibility of the Picard series leading to a Picard movie. Stewart didn't want to get ahead of himself.

“Oh lord, we’re set up with possibly three years of this show,” Stewart said. “So if there is a film, it’s a long way off.”

The show’s producers had already teased that the new Picard series was hoping to be a multiple season series. Stewart’s comments are the first to suggest that the series is actually charting a course through several seasons from the start.

In addition to starring in the show, Stewart is also a producer and spent weeks in the show’s writers’ room when it was getting off the ground. Executive producer Alex Kurtzman told ComicBook.com about what it was like having Stewart in the writers’ room.

“It's interesting, Patrick didn't want to put handcuffs on us in any way by saying, ‘I don't want to do this, and I don't want to do that,’” Kurtzman says. “He said, ‘I want you to have the freedom to explore this character from a new perspective, and I will always know in my gut if it feels like something he would or wouldn't do.’ And that's the conversation that we have as we're building it scene to scene.

“So, we're started to internalize his thinking about Picard, and because that conversation is literally daily, either on email, or in the room in person, I think we feel confident that we're making choices that he would be happy with, and is happy with, because ultimately he's a producer on the show too, and he gets as much of a say.”

In a recent interview, Stewart described the series as a "10-hour movie." At three seasons, that could extend to a trilogy of 10-hour movies (or one really long 30-hour movie).

The series will take place 20 years after Picard was last seen in Star Trek: Nemesis, taking the prime Star Trek timeline past the events of that film and the destruction of Romulus for the first time. Stewart has said that the Star Trek universe will be changed from what fans remember.

“The story is great...but it references the present day at times,” Stewart said. “And that’s all I can say. I’m not saying we’re in the present day. We’re not, we’re not. But the world that we find Jean-Luc Picard in is not quite the world that we left him in.”

Are you excited about the new Picard series? Let us know in the comments!

The Picard series is expected to debut on CBS All Access in late 2019.

[H/T] Trek Movie