Star Trek actor Karl Urban was at New York Comic Con to promote the upcoming Amazon Prime superhero series The Boys, but he also talked a little about Trek as well. In addition, another Oscar-winning Star Trek fan is offering his services for the future of the franchise.

Karl Urban has no news on ‘Star Trek 4’

Two months ago, it was reported that Star Trek 4 negotiations with Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth had stalled over a salary dispute. In late August Karl Urban said he was confident a deal could be struck and that Chris Pine wanted to do it, something Pine said himself in early September.

It has been quiet since then. Over the weekend, in an NYCC roundtable interview about The Boys posted by ShowBizJunkies on YouTube, Karl Urban was asked what he could say about movement on the project. Urban replied:

I know nothing about Star Trek, I wish I did…No news, apparently there is no news.

Momentum on the project seemed to have been building since late April when the CEO of Paramount confirmed that Star Trek 4, along with the Tarantino Trek project were both in development and director S.J. Clarkson was hired for Star Trek 4. Clarkson began meeting with cast members and shooting was said to be set to start in early 2019.

Even if Paramount was moving forward without Pine and/or Hemsworth, one would expect that actors like Karl Urban would be aware of the plans to allow for working the production into his 2019 schedule. After all the progress that seemed to be happening in the first half of 2018, things seem to be regressing back to where things were in 2017, with actors lamenting the lack of news or progress.

There were a couple of other Trek connections to Urban’s trip to New York. His Star Trek co-star Simon Pegg was a surprise guest at the NYCC The Boys panel, announcing he had a role in the upcoming series. Also, during the live stream interview from NYCC, Karl Urban decided to get the crowd fired up by channeling Dr. McCoy and belting out: “Are you out of your Vulcan minds!” TrekMovie posted the moment on Twitter over the weekend.

Mission director Christopher McQuarrie has thoughts on directing a Star Trek movie

While it isn’t clear what is going to happen next for the Star Trek film franchise, there is another successful filmmaker looking to head into the final frontier. At a recent Collider screening of Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the film’s director Christopher McQuarrie (who is also an Oscar-winning screenwriter) said he would like to direct a Trek feature film, and he also offered some thought’s on the state of the franchise, saying:

I feel like Star Trek is kind of… it’s gone away from what the tenets of the series were about, which was kind of the hope and the promise and the science.

These are interesting thoughts from McQuarrie as he was hired by Star Trek producer J.J. Abrams and Paramount to helm the last two Mission: Impossible films, both of which have performed well for the studio, and another is expected.

We also know that McQuarrie is a big Star Trek fan. Back in 2005 and 2006 he was part of the team, along with director Bryan Singer, that developed the “Star Trek: Federation” concept which had been planned to be pitched as a TV series but was abandoned after J.J. Abrams was tapped by Paramount to reboot the film franchise.

At the Collider Mission: Impossible – Fallout screening, McQuarrie also got practical when talking about how he would approach directing Star Trek:

It’s simple math, you know what you have to do with Star Trek? You have to make Star Trek for a domestic audience. Star Trek does better domestically than it does internationally, so I would come to Star Trek, and go, “Realistically, how much money should I make this Star Trek movie for?” And you’d give me a budget, and I’d go off and make the movie. That’s what I would do. You look at any movie like that, if you just be honest with yourself about the economics, it’s just a very real part of doing that.

It is these economic realities following the under-performance of Star Trek Beyond that are at the heart of the dispute with Pine and Hemsworth as Paramount has recalibrated for a more modest budget for the follow-up.

S.J. Clarkson has already been tapped to direct Star Trek 4 and McQuarrie is already at work on the next Mission: Impossible film, so it doesn’t look like he will be coming on board the Enterprise anytime soon. But there is always the Trek project based on a Quentin Tarantino pitch, which wouldn’t necessarily also be directed by Tarantino. McQuarrie obviously has a strong relationship with entities involved with the Star Trek movies – Paramount, Skydance and Bad Robot – so he could be a good fit, once Paramount decides how it wants to move forward with its venerable Trek film franchise.

Keep up with all the news on Star Trek 4 and upcoming Trek films at TrekMovie.com.