Daddy Kirk to return for Star Trek 4

Paramount must be feeling confident about Star Trek Beyond, as they have today announced the Kelvin timeline will continue in Star Trek 4 (actual title still to come), with a surprise returning star. Joining the rest of the crew will be Chris Hemsworth, aka George Kirk, who we last saw blowing himself up to cripple the Narada and allow the rest of the crew of the USS Kelvin (including his son and wife, James and Winona) to survive.

If Kirk manages to overcome the shadow of his farther in Star Trek Beyond, this could certainly throw a spanner in his emotional works!

Here's Paramount's brief press release:

Paramount Pictures, Skydance and Bad Robot today announced that the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise will return to the big screen for another voyage.

In the next installment of the epic space adventure, Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk will cross paths with a man he never had a chance to meet, but whose legacy has haunted him since the day he was born: his father.

Chris Hemsworth, who appeared in 2009’s “STAR TREK,” will return to the space saga as George Kirk to star alongside Pine.

The remaining cast is expected to return.

J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay will write the screenplay. J.J. Abrams and Lindsey Weber will produce through Bad Robot Productions. David Ellison and Dana Goldberg of Skydance will executive produce.

Chris Hemsworth is a growing star in Hollywood, so that should be a great draw for the next instalment in the film. Will their be time travel hijinks to bring to two Kirk generations together? Surely so, especially if they're planning to keep Hemsworth his dashing youthful self!

Here's a pretty funny video of J.J. Abrams telling Access Hollywood's Scott Mantz the news:



Also returning from where they never quite got are writers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, who had been working on Star Trek 3, until there idea got booted and Simon Pegg and Doug Jung, along with director Justin Lin, were brought in to start from scratch and create what became Star Trek Beyond. I wonder if anything is been carried on from the aborted Star Trek 3, or if Payne and McKay are starting over again themselves. They must be pretty far along if they've already been able to secure Chris Hemsworth.

No news yet on the director, in interviews so far Justin Lin has seemed keen to move on to other projects already, so I would guess someone else might be recruited (then again that seemed to be the case after the 2009 Star Trek film, and J.J. Abrams did return in the end).

Also to be determined is the ultimate fate of Pavel Chekov, in light of the recent untimely death of Anton Yelchin. J.J. Abrams has already ruled out recasting in an interview with Postmedia Network:

I would say there’s no replacing him. There’s no recasting. I can’t possibly imagine that, and I think Anton deserves better

Though the in universe fate has yet to be decided, when asked about killing him off:

I have thought about it, we’re working on it, and it’s too early to talk about it

Time to add CGI Arex to the crew? Or to hope Jaylah is good pilot as well as warrior and engineer??