New 'Star Trek' film will explore early years of Starfleet, Paramount reveals

With "Star Trek" flourishing on the small screen with offerings like "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds," "Star Trek: Discovery," "Star Trek: Picard," "Star Trek: Prodigy" and "Star Trek: Lower Decks," it's high time fans were treated to another big screen "Star Trek" feature film, and now our hard-fought wish has been answered.

As recently announced at Deadline, J.J. Abrams will executive produce a new "Star Trek" movie set decades earlier in his fractured Kelvin timeline that was first established in the filmmaker's 2009 reboot simply titled "Star Trek." (Check out our primer for every Star Trek movies in order if you need a refresher.) Fortifying the creative team is Toby Haynes, one of the main directors of Disney+'s acclaimed "Star Wars" series, "Andor," starring Diego Luna's enigmatic rebel spy Cassian Andor.

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Haynes is helming this upcoming "Star Trek" film, which is destined to examine the early days of Starfleet a generation or so after the events of the prime universe's "Star Trek: Enterprise," from a screenplay written by the king of literary mash-ups, Seth Grahame-Smith ("Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," "Abraham Lincoln," Vampire Hunter," "The Lego Batman Movie").

J.J. Abrams will act as producer under his familiar Bad Robot banner.

Apparently, similar to "Star Trek," "Star Trek Into Darkness," and "Star Trek Beyond," this new movie will occur along that alternate Kelvin timeline emerging into existence when the renegade Romulan Nero (Eric Bana) accidentally launched back in time after a supernova wiped out his Romulan homeworld. We ranked every Star Trek movie worst to best so far, so let us know which one was your favorite.

The last time we were treated to a "Star Trek" movie was back in 2016 for "Star Trek Beyond," right before the IP was expanded in 2017's "Star Trek: Discovery" and the mission to restore its former glory began on the CBS All Access (rebranded as Paramount Plus) streaming platform. No further plot details have been announced so stay tuned as production and casting ramp up.

And don't worry, a fourth big screen installment of Abrams' original Kelvin timeline is still languishing in the Hollywood pipeline featuring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Zoe Saldana to provide the popular sci-fi franchise's faithful fans plenty of exciting projects to look forward to in the final frontier.