Star Trek’s lead producer, Alex Kurtzman, believes the divide between television and film has disappeared in the era of streaming services. Kurtzman told Variety as much during the publication’s examination of the intellectual property-driven streaming boom. Kurtzman wasn’t speaking specifically about the Star Trek franchise when discussing the idea, though the merger of CBS and Viacom into ViacomCBS does put all of Star Trek back under the same roof. Instead, he spoke in a broader sense about how franchises develop in the new era and why it no longer makes sense to treat television series and films based on the property as two distinct entities.
“I think vertical alignment has made it so that it’s impossible not to accept the reality that the line between movies and television is gone,” says Kurtzman. “It doesn’t mean that you can’t have a feature that is separate from television. But if they aren’t connected in some way, then you’re basically running two universes parallel as opposed to interconnected, and I think that those messages could potentially cancel each other out.”
Star Trek: Discovery referred to the Kelvin Timeline of the most recent Star Trek movies in its third season, but that’s as close to cross-pollination between the two lines that fans have seen thus far. When Kurtzman last commented on the specific state of the relationship between Star Trek film and television in 2020, he was hopeful that the two would come together. However, he was not involved with the movies in any way at the time.
“I have no involvement in it right now,” Kurtzman told SFX Magazine. “I don’t know where that’s going. Frankly, I have my hands very full. Having done two of those films, I loved them so much, and I really would love to see continuity and unification between the features and the TV side, because I think it’s what’s good for Star Trek, and that can be done any number of ways.”
Time will whether fans will begin to see crossovers between the modern Star Trek television series and the upcoming Paramount Pictures-produced Star Trek movies. However, they are beginning to share talent. Kalinda Vazquez, a Star Trek: Discovery writer, was hired to pen the script for a new Star Trek movie. That’s believed to be separate from the J.J. Abrams-produced film now set to release in the summer of 2023.
All of Star Trek television is streaming now on Paramount+.