Anna Daniels
While Star Trek is having a resurgence on the CBS All Access streaming platform with shows like Discovery and Picard, the beloved sci-fi franchise has encountered significant turbulence when it comes to launching another feature film. Simon Pegg, who has played Montgomery “Scotty” Scott in the three most recent Trek movies and co-wrote 2016’s Star Trek Beyond, has previously expressed his doubts about more sequels coming to fruition, and in a new interview, he remains skeptical about the chances that his co-stars will reconvene for another entry.
But while he doesn’t seem to be holding his breath for more Trek, he does seem excited about Mission: Impossible 7 and 8, writer/director Christopher McQuarrie‘s spy sequels which are set to shoot back-to-back. Read Pegg’s latest quotes below.
While promoting his new movie Lost Transmissions, Pegg spoke with GamesRadar+ and Total Film and gave the latest update about a possible Star Trek 4 which would theoretically reunite the J.J. Abrams-era cast members:
“I don’t know. The fact is, Star Trek movies don’t make Marvel money. They make maybe $500m at the most, and to make one now, on the scale they’ve set themselves, is $200m. You have to make three times that to make a profit. I don’t feel like the last one…They didn’t really take advantage of the 50th anniversary. The [studio executives] at the time dropped the ball on the promo of the film. And we’ve lost momentum. I think losing Anton [Yelchin] was a huge blow to our little family, and our enthusiasm to do another one might have been affected by that. So I don’t know.”
Pegg’s “Paramount didn’t market the movie correctly” take isn’t new – he’s said that in previous interviews – and he’s not wrong. Star Trek Beyond should have been a much bigger hit than it was, especially since it’s a much better movie than the far-too-derivative Star Trek Into Darkness. And I think he’s also correct about the tragic death of Anton Yelchin at far too young an age having an impact, unspoken or otherwise, on everyone involved with the films. Another Trek movie with this cast, but without Yelchin’s innocent, wide-eyed Chekov, just wouldn’t feel right. I guess it’s a good thing, then, that the plan for Noah Hawley’s Star Trek movie seems to be to bring in a whole new cast.
But that’s not the only major Paramount franchise that Pegg is involved with. He’s coming back to reprise his role as IMF tech guru Benji in Mission: Impossible 7, and in that same interview, he revealed that “Benji’s arc for the next two movies is really interesting,” and that he has “seen the grand plan for the next one-and-a-half movies, and it’s fucking insane.” Man, I can’t wait to see these movies. And I kind of love that Pegg has only seen the plan for the next one-and-a-half movies and not the full two. Christopher McQuarrie makes these movies flying by the seat of his pants (not to be confused with Tom Cruise, who would probably literally fly through the air with airplane pants on if that were actually a thing), so the missing half probably doesn’t even exist yet. If any other filmmaker or franchise took that approach, I would be a little worried. But McQuarrie has proven time and again that he thrives under those conditions, and his work never suffers for it.
Mission: Impossible 7 arrives in theaters on July 23, 2021 and Mission: Impossible 8 will follow on August 5, 2022.
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