Thanks to the success of Amazon’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne have become known names in the industry.
Before they got the high-profile gig, they were mostly known for a project that didn’t take off – a fourth film in the J.J. Abrams-produced era of “Star Trek” movies.
The pair penned the script for a follow-up to 2016’s “Star Trek Beyond,” a film they had done uncredited work on. The next sequel was announced before the release of ‘Beyond’ and was to have seen the return of Chris Hemsworth as George Kirk – father of Chris Pine’s James T. Kirk.
Hemsworth played the role in the opening scene of Abrams’ 2009 reboot with the character killed in action, but somehow would be brought back. The “Thor” star was attached to the new film back in mid-2016, with director S.J. Clarkson then coming along in early 2018, before both left the project in late 2018/early 2019.
Speaking with Esquire for the ‘Rings’ finale this week, McKay and Payne have finally opened up in detail about their scrapped fourth ‘Trek’ script and what it was to have included. McKay says:
“The conceit was that through a cosmic quirk in the ‘Star Trek’ world, they were the same age. It was going to be a grandfather-son space adventure – think ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’ in space. We were really thrilled about it. [It has] a really cool 2001: A Space Odyssey-esque sci-fi idea at the core.
We worked on it for two and half years with Lindsey Weber, our non-writing executive producer on ‘Rings of Power,’ and an amazing director, S.J. Clarkson. The movie eventually fell apart, and it really was heartbreak for us… we would have loved to make that movie.”
He added the film boasted an original villain and then asked Payne if they should reveal how the two Kirks end up together. Payne then said:
“There’s an episode of ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ called ‘Relics’ where they find Scotty, who has been trapped in a transporter for a couple of decades, and they’re able to have cool adventure with him.
Our conceit was, ‘What if right before the Kelvin impacted with that huge mining ship, George Kirk had tried to beam himself over to his wife’s shuttle where his son, Jim Kirk, had just been born? And what if the ship hadn’t completely exploded – what if it left some space junk?’
Think about when you send a text message, and you’ve typed it out, but you haven’t quite hit send. On the other side, they see those three little dots that someone has typed. It’s like the transporter had absorbed his pattern up into the pattern buffer, but hadn’t spit him out on the other side. It was actually a saved copy of him that was in the computer.”
McKay then went on to explain how that would fit into the story:
“The adventure is that Chris Pine and the crew of the Enterprise have to seek out the wreckage of the ship that his father died on because of a mystery and a new villain. On the ship, they stumble across his father’s pattern. They beam him out, and he has no idea that no time has passed at all, and that he’s looking at his son. Then the adventure goes from there.”
That version is not being made now. “Star Trek 4” remained in active development for years after this take was ditched. Notably, Quentin Tarantino and writer Mark L. Smith, among others, worked on a version inspired by the original series episode “A Piece of the Action”. Then “Fargo” creator Noah Hawley was attached to a version that dealt with a galactic pandemic.
The most recent version had “WandaVision” director Matt Shakman linked to a script penned by Lindsey Beer and Geneva Robertson-Dworet before Shakman departed earlier this year for Marvel’s upcoming “Fantastic Four” movie. At the last report, the film was pulled from Paramount’s release slate – its status remains unknown.
