UPDATE 9/1/2026: While TV takes pitches, the film side has its direction: Goldstein and Daley say the new Star Trek movie is a near-real-time Training Day-meets-Crimson Tide thriller about Starfleet with all-new characters.
UPDATE 8/31/2026: The theatrical side is no longer just planned: the Star Trek 60th Anniversary Event puts the first four films back in theaters September 4-8, with director’s cuts and collector merch in tow.
UPDATE 8/19/2026: A well-placed industry insider says everything at Paramount is currently aimed at the new movie, with no plan for the rumored Star Trek: United series and no involvement expected from Alex Kurtzman if a new show does get greenlit. The same source warns the franchise is not too big to fail. Read the full report here.
Paramount+ is finally addressing what happens to Star Trek.
In a wide-ranging Deadline interview about programming strategy, EVP and Head of Originals Jane Wiseman was pressed directly on the franchise sitting at a crossroads, with Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy both ending and nothing new greenlit.
What Wiseman Actually Said
Asked about the genre slate, Wiseman said the space is wide open, that Paramount+ is the home of Star Trek, and that series are coming back with more to follow.
Pressed specifically on the plan for the franchise, she pointed to Chris Parnell, the genre executive she and Cindy Holland recruited out of Apple TV, calling him the building’s biggest Trek fan and noting plenty of others there are too.
Then the substance: she framed working out the franchise’s next step as both the team’s goal and its job.
Paramount+ is “talking to a lot of writers,” she said, and leaning on CBS Studios.
She called identifying the next iteration imperative, because the property matters too much to get wrong. She closed by noting they are in touch with Paramount Pictures, which has a Star Trek movie in development.
What It Likely Means
Wiseman is careful. She is a Netflix veteran doing a trade interview about a 60-year-old crown jewel, and she gave the answer that keeps every door open.
But strip the reassurance out and one line is doing all the work: they are talking to a lot of writers. What that means is a lot of new pitches.
Studios do not canvass a lot of writers when they have a plan. They canvass when they are taking pitches. That is a development process at the very beginning, not a handoff from an existing regime, and it likely means the next Star Trek series does not currently exist in any form.
The second reveal is who she said they are leaning on.
CBS Studios. Not Secret Hideout.
CBS Studios is the studio that owns and produces the franchise. Secret Hideout is Kurtzman’s production banner, the entity that has actually made every Star Trek show since 2017.
Asked where the next Star Trek comes from, the head of originals named the corporate rights holder and the incoming feature division.
She did not name the producer who has held the keys for ten years.
These Are David Ellison’s People
The other thing worth understanding is who is doing the talking.
After Skydance closed its $8 billion Paramount acquisition, David Ellison brought in former Netflix originals chief Cindy Holland to run Paramount+.
Holland hired Wiseman, her old Netflix colleague, to head originals. The two of them then pulled Parnell over from Apple TV to run genre.
Every executive now deciding what Star Trek becomes was installed by the Ellison regime. None of them inherited a relationship with the previous era, and none of them owe it anything.
What Our Insiders Have Been Saying Since June
Back on June 29, Cosmic Book News reported exclusively that Ellison and Mike De Luca were teaming to revitalize Star Trek.
“Ellison LOVES movies, understands tentpole films, is filmmaker-friendly, and pushes personal projects,” our insiders told us. “He has a lot in common with Mike De Luca. They’ll work well together, revitalizing Star Trek.”
Days later the same sources gave us the blueprint: the franchise goes back to what made Wrath of Khan through The Next Generation work, part of Ellison’s wider push to return the studio to what performs globally.
That fit the larger picture our sources laid out on July 4, with Ellison and Paramount brass holding internal analytics on the audience collapse that hollowed out Marvel, Star Wars, Doctor Who and Star Trek alike.
Seven weeks later, Ellison’s hand-picked head of originals is publicly canvassing writers for a franchise with an empty slate.
The writers’ room questions also arrive as Star Trek marks a milestone, with the franchise’s 60th anniversary documentary hitting Regal theaters in October. And the uncertainty over the franchise’s TV future comes even as Paramount weighs Star Trek re-releases planned for theaters under the merger.
Kurtzman’s Deal Runs Out This Year
Which brings it back to the name Wiseman never said.
Kurtzman’s overall deal with CBS Studios, the nine-figure extension signed in 2021 and reported at roughly $150 million, is said to expire at the end of 2026. Rumors even said earlier, as of this past July.
The last sourced word on it came in March, when Variety reported alongside the Starfleet Academy cancellation that Kurtzman and CBS Studios were in talks on a new arrangement.
Kurtzman told TrekMovie around the same time that conversations were underway and he had nothing to report.
Five months later there is still nothing to report, and the picture around him has only gotten worse.
Discovery is over. Picard is over. Lower Decks is over. Prodigy is over. Strange New Worlds ends with season five. Starfleet Academy was killed after failing to chart in a single Nielsen weekly top ten, and ends with season two. Both wrap in 2027. Behind them is nothing, for the first time in eleven years.
Now the studio is taking writer pitches, through CBS Studios, under executives Ellison installed, with the man who has run the franchise since 2017 going unmentioned in the interview announcing it.
Paramount has not announced Kurtzman’s exit, and until it does this remains a read of the evidence rather than a confirmed departure.
But every arrow points one way. The shows are gone, the deal is up, the executives are new, and the next era is being sourced from a room he is not in.
The Kurtzman era of Star Trek is ending, and Paramount+ just described its replacement without him in it.
