The fourth Kelvin film was announced before 2016’s Beyond, but it’s yet to get past the development phase. Now it seems the January reports from trade magazines are accurate – Star Trek 4 is shelved.

Chris Hemsworth, George Kirk in the 2009 movie, spoke to Variety about a whole range of topics and touched on why he turned down reprising the role in the next movie. Variety explained that he wasn’t sold on the script – Hemsworth saying,

“I didn’t feel like we landed on a reason to revisit that yet,”
“I didn’t want to be underwhelmed by what I was going to bring to the table.”

The fourth iteration of the J.J. Abrams flavour was announced by the producer before Beyond premiered, but it’s had a rocky development cycle. J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay wrote the script and it sat dormant until last year when the cogs seemed to start spinning, S.J. Clarkson was hired to direct in April 2018 before things came to a grinding halt once again when Chris’ Pine and Hemsworth walked away from negotiating their salaries. Director Clarkson moved on and in January those trade magazines considered the movie shelved.

There have been rumours about Quentin Tarantino helming a Trek film, but all we’ve gotten from him is a brief quote to /Film

[It’s] “a very big possibility” [but] “I haven’t been dealing with those guys for a while ‘cos I’ve been making my movie. But we’ve talked about a story and a script.”

With on going talk of a reunification between CBS and Paramount perhaps the movie making business has let the franchise go, expecting the TV business to pick it up when they become one.