Another Star Trek actor has made a comment about the next Trek feature film. This time it comes from Karl Urban, who was at Comic-Con last weekend to promote Thor: Ragnorak. Speaking to Screenrant about returning to the final frontier, Urban said:

I’ll tell you if Paramount greenlights a fourth movie for us, I’ll be there. I love working with those guys and you know the fans love those characters. Yeah. It’d be a blast.

While a somewhat generic quote, it follows the same pattern of comments we have been seeing from other actors from the Kelvin movies in recent months. In general they are all waiting to hear what Paramount wants to do next with the franchise. We heard similar things from Zachary Quinto just a few weeks ago, with the actor also noting that a script was currently in development.

These actors are busy

Even though Paramount announced they will develop a fourth Star Trek film with J.J. Abrams as the producer, that isn’t the same thing as a green light, especially in terms of setting aside time in actors schedules. In April Chris Pine seemed frustrated with the lack of word on what’s next for Trek, noting he had to make plans. These actors are in demand and their schedules fill up. Chris Pine is in this summer’s hit Wonder Woman and he may be needed for the sequel which was just greenlit for a Christmas 2019 release. In addition it was also announced last week that Pine and Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins are teaming up for a new mini-series titled One Day She’ll Darken for TNT.

And Pine isn’t the only busy one: Zoe Saldana is already back to work on the next Avatar movie which begins production in September. Due to the plan to shoot four sequels back to back, she may be very booked well into 2018. And then there is always the inevitable next Guardians of the Galaxy film and possibly other MCU films in her future.

Paramount has a franchise decision to make

As we have noted before, Paramount has recently been anchoring each summer with one of three key franchises: Star Trek, Transformers or Mission: Impossible. And even though last summer’s Star Trek Beyond fell below expectations, it was still their best performing film of 2016 and the studio has made it clear that they still sees Trek as one of their three key franchises. Next summer Paramount will release a Mission film and a Bumblebee Transformers spin-off. They have announced another Transformers movie for 2019, but the severe underperformance of this summer’s Transformers: The Last Night could change that.

If Paramount wants to stick with their pattern of at least one of the big three franchises every summer and they decide they don’t want to do three summers in a row with Transformers, then logic dictates they would want another Star Trek film for the summer of 2019. Such a thing is doable but they are going to have to start making some moves including locking down these actors, assuming of course that they want some or all of these actors for the next entry in the film franchise. Otherwise 2020 seems more likely target for next the Trek feature.

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