Star Trek 4 writers spill details on how Chris Hemsworth would have returned

Just before the release of Star Trek Beyond, J.J. Abrams announced that Star Trek 4 was already in the works and would bring back Chris Hemsworth as George Kirk, the father of Chris Pine’s James Kirk. J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay signed on to write the script, with S.J. Clarkson set to direct, but the project was shelved when negotiations with Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth fell apart. While there have been other Star Trek projects in development since then, it seems that the one involving Chris Hemsworth is well and truly dead, so the writers might as well spill the beans.

After leaving Star Trek 4, J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay went on to develop The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power for Amazon. The pair recently spoke with Esquire about The Rings of Power, but they were also asked about what they had planned for Star Trek 4.

The one you’re asking about would have been the fourth in the franchise, reuniting Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pine. The conceit was that through a cosmic quirk in the Star Trek world, they were the same age. It was going to be a grand father-son space adventure—think Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in space. We were really thrilled about it. We had an original villain and a really cool 2001: A Space Odyssey-esque sci-fi idea at the core.

The writers worked on it for “two and a half years” before it eventually fell apart, which Patrick McKay describes as a “heartbreak.” As for what Star Trek 4 would have been about and just how Chris Hemsworth would have returned, J.D. Payne referred to an episode of The Next Generation which brought back Scotty, who had been trapped in a transporter for decades. It seems they would have used a similar plot device to bring George Kirk back. “Our conceit was, ‘What if right before the Kelvin impacted with that huge mining ship, George Kirk had tried to beam himself over to his wife’s shuttle where his son, Jim Kirk, had just been born?” Payne explained. “And what if the ship hadn’t completely exploded—what if it left some space junk?’ Think about when you send a text message and you’ve typed it out, but you haven’t quite hit send. On the other side, they see those three little dots that someone has typed. It’s like the transporter had absorbed his pattern up into the pattern buffer, but hadn’t spit him out on the other side. It was actually a saved copy of him that was in the computer.“

McKay added that “Chris Pine and the crew of the Enterprise have to seek out the wreckage of the ship that his father died on because of a mystery and a new villain. In the ship, they stumble across his father’s pattern. They beam him out and he has no idea that no time has passed at all, and that he’s looking at his son. Then the adventure goes from there.” As for the next Star Trek movie featuring Chris Pine’s crew, that’s up in the air once again. The film had been given a 2023 release date and was set to be directed by WandaVision‘s Matt Shakman, but he departed to direct Fantastic Four for Marvel, and Paramount removed the project from their schedule. Maybe one day.

What do you think of the original plan to bring Chris Hemsworth back for Star Trek 4? Would you still like to see that movie?