Why hasn’t there been a new Star Trek movie in almost 10 years? A video game might be to blame

Although the Star Trek series has consistently appeared on television, the big screen has been largely neglected by this franchise. Since Star Trek Beyond (released in 2016), it has now been nearly 11 years since the reboot, or any other version, hit theaters, making it the biggest gap in the 45 years of existence. But why is there no longer a movie in the franchise? Some blame a video game.

The Star Trek video game that brought down the hype in the movies

After the success of the 2009 Star Trek reboot, the franchise already had a 2013 sequel, ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’. However, in between the two films, there was a video game, As it was still being made in those days, this video game was released about 20 days before the release of the second installment in the Kelvin universe. The game featured Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldaña, Karl Urban, John Cho, and Simon Pegg’s voices, making it even “canonical”. However, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game was not as well received, with low sales and terrible reviews.

At the time, driector J.J. Abrams was extremely disappointed by the video game and, while Into Darkness was not a commercial failure as such, he felt that it was not something that “benefited the series”.

“The last game, which was obviously a big disappointment to me, was something that we were actually involved in at the very beginning and then we sort of realized that it was not going in a place where we were going to get what we wanted, so we dropped out,” Abrams explained. “To me the video game could have been something that actually really benefitted the series and was an exciting, fun game with great gameplay. [...] I think that it was something without question that didn’t help the movie and arguably hurt it.”

Subsequently, Star Trek Beyond would be released in 2016, but now under the direction of Justin Lin.

What was the Star Trek video game about?

A year or so after the events of the 2009 film, the ‘Star Trek’ video game is set on New Vulcan, a colony where displaced Vulcans have relocated. Helios, a quick terraforming tool available to New Vulcan, is helping them rebuild their colony. However, an army of interdimensional reptilian men flood through after the Vulcan scientists unintentionally created a hole to a parallel reality. Fans of the original “Star Trek” television series may recognize this Gorn. The Gorn start transforming humans into insane zombies by infecting them with a mind virus.

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