The Jean-Luc Picard Star Trek series will debut in late 2019

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

It's been over fifteen years since Patrick Stewart last played Captain Jean-Luc Picard in STAR TREK: NEMESIS, but the actor will soon be suiting up once more for a Picard-centric Star Trek TV series for CBS All Access. CBS Corp's new chief creative officer David Nevins recently spoke at UBS’ Annual Global Media and Communications Conference in New York and revealed just when we can expect the Picard series to debut.

As we know, the second season of Star Trek: Discovery, which Nevins says "is in a great place," will premiere on January 17, 2019, but next year will actually contain even more Star Trek than we expected. According to Nevins, the Picard series will premiere "at the end of the year." This could still change, but it does give a good indication of when CBS is expecting to launch it. In addition to Star Trek: Discovery's second season and the Picard series, Nevins also says that they will be doing more Star Trek: Short Treks between the finale of Discovery's second season and the premiere of the Picard series. Make it so.

Pulitzer prize winning author Michael Chabon is one of the writers on the Jean-Luc Picard show, and also penned the recent "Calypso" episode of Star Trek: Short Treks, and spoke with IGN last month to tease a little about the "very grounded" upcoming series which is being crafted by fans.

We started developing it initially with a core group of me and [Discovery writer] Kirsten Beyer and [Discovery executive producers] Akiva Goldsman and Alex Kurtzman. And, that four, that got the ball rolling initially. … We all have our beloved episodes, and we all had important moments. We knew the material, we knew the character, and we talked a lot about a lot of different episodes that were… the kind of storytelling type things that might be possible ways, that might be clues for us going forward. It’s very grounded.

Not only that, but Patrick Stewart was brought in very early to help guide the development the series as well. "He has the kind of master grasp of the character. He has been really influential in both helping us understand the character, and also pushing us and challenging us. And I think more than anything — and I don’t think it’s revealing anything for me to say this — he’s really pushing us to try to do something new and different with the character," Chabon said. "And that’s why he wants to play it, so that he can play something that honors the character, that’s true to the character. And like I said, he’s a very fierce protector of the character, but at the same time, he wants to see Jean-Luc Picard having experiences, having adventures, and be put in situations we haven’t seen before." Our next dose of Star Trek is set to arrive on December 6th in the form of "The Brightest Star," a Short Trek installment which centers on the origins of Lt. Saru (Doug Jones).