Noah Hawley on why his Star Trek film - currently “in stasis” - would be not unlike his take on Fargo

Stasis pods from Star Trek: Into Darkness. Noah Hawley’s Star Trek script may or may not be inside one of the pods. Image Paramount Pictures

Prospective Star Trek film director Noah Hawley has given a new interview in which he gives more detail about his take on Star Trek 4, which is currently on hold. In it, he discussed his concept for the film, as well as what it has in common with his other big project, the television series Fargo.

The piece in Variety is ostensibly about what it was like for Hawley as he finished off the last of Fargo season four, which is set to air on Hulu from September 27th. Like many Hollywood productions, Fargo was forced to stop filming in March and just finished off the season in August. The original plan was for Hawley to complete Fargo and head directly into Star Trek 4 - until COVID-19 hit.

Now, after an uncertain summer, new Paramount Pictures head Emma Watts, who joined the company at the end of June, is taking the time to reconsider the film side of the franchise, and that includes putting Hawley’s production on hold.

According to Variety, Hawley says the project is still alive, just “in stasis”. And Hawley explained a bit more about the plot, specifically why and how it would be starting fresh, but also not. Like Hawley’s Fargo, he intends for his Star Trek to feature a whole new crew of characters, but have touchstones back to existing franchise canon. “We’re not doing Kirk and we’re not doing Picard,” he said. “It’s a start from scratch that then allows us to do what we did with Fargo, where for the first three hours you go, ‘Oh, it really has nothing to do with the movie,’ and then you find the money. So you reward the audience with a thing that they love.”

Variety notes that while the death knell hasn’t been sounded just yet on the project, there might be risk in the form of Watts, the aforementioned new head of Paramount Pictures. She was in charge of 20th Century Fox when Hawley’s previous film Lucy in the Sky (his directorial debut) premiered and then failed spectacularly at the box office. That film, made for over $20m, pulled just $325,000 in ticket sales and currently rates just 21% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Back in August, when news first broke that Hawley’s Star Trek film was on hold, Deadline expected that we would hear more about the future of Trek films “in the coming weeks”. You’ll know when we know.