The new Star Trek movie is officially moving, and it is leaving every familiar face behind.
Directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley offered the first real update on the film Thursday during Collider’s Directors on Directing panel in Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con, confirming the script is currently being written.
“It won’t be the characters you’ve seen previously,” Goldstein said, per THR’s Borys Kit, who reported from the panel. “It will be a little further into the future than what you’ve seen.”
Daley kept things just as cryptic, telling the Hall H crowd, “I think people will be surprised,” per GamesRadar’s live coverage.
A Clean Break From Everything That Came Before
Thursday’s comments confirm the approach hasn’t softened since Deadline first broke the news in November that Goldstein and Daley would write, produce, and direct an original Star Trek film for Paramount through their GoldDay banner.
That report described the project as a completely new take on the Star Trek universe, unconnected to any previous or current series, movie, or development project.
So no Kelvin timeline reunion with Chris Pine and crew, and no origin movie from Andor director Toby Haynes, both of which died on the vine during a decade of development hell.
Whatever this turns out to be, it will be the first Star Trek feature since 2016’s Star Trek Beyond, and the first made under David Ellison’s Paramount.
How Far Into The Future Are We Talking?
Goldstein’s wording is the detail fans will be chewing on all weekend.
The Original Series took place in the 23rd century. The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager ran through the 24th. Picard closed out its story in the early 25th century, and Discovery leapt all the way to the 32nd.
“A little further into the future than what you’ve seen,” combined with a crew of all-new characters, points to open territory: a fresh era with no canon baggage, no legacy contracts, and no prequel math to satisfy.
It is the exact opposite of the origin story the previous regime spent years developing.
Goldstein and Daley also know how to make franchise resurrection look easy. They wrote Spider-Man: Homecoming, revived Dungeons & Dragons for Paramount with Honor Among Thieves, and their Ryan Reynolds thriller Mayday, made for Ellison’s Skydance and Apple, is getting its own Comic-Con push this weekend ahead of a September 4 premiere.
The Ellison Star Trek Reset In Action
All of this tracks exactly with what I have been reporting for months.
As Cosmic Book News exclusively reported, David Ellison and Mike De Luca are saving Star Trek, and my insiders followed up with the specifics: they are taking the franchise back to what made Wrath of Khan through The Next Generation work.
That philosophy was never about the calendar. It is about tone: serious, sincere, event-scale science fiction instead of the streaming-era noise that got Discovery canceled and Starfleet Academy‘s sets torn down.
Jumping past the eras audiences know, with characters nobody has met, is the cleanest possible way to deliver that reset without dragging along fifteen years of baggage.
Paramount brass have said as much themselves, calling Star Trek a top priority for the company and promising film and television will finally be developed together instead of siloed apart.
The timing of Thursday’s update is also worth noting.
It landed the same day Strange New Worlds Season 4 premiered on Paramount+, and two days before Saturday’s Star Trek Universe 60th anniversary panel in Hall H, where Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman appear alongside the Strange New Worlds cast and franchise legends including George Takei and Michael Dorn.
Fans went into the week skeptical that Saturday’s panel would deliver movie news. Turns out the movie update showed up two days early, at somebody else’s panel.
Star Trek’s 60th Is The Launchpad
The franchise’s 60th anniversary lands September 8, and the momentum is everywhere at Comic-Con: the original Enterprise filming model is on display, a 60th anniversary Blu-ray gift set arrives on Star Trek Day, and William Shatner is out there saying he would still play Kirk at 95.
Now the film side finally has a pulse to match. The script is being written, the directors are locked, and the new regime is treating Star Trek like the crown jewel it always should have been.
The safe bet: this is not the last Star Trek movie news of 2026.
