Paramount is rolling the dice on Star Trek again, this time by handing the keys to the Enterprise to Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, the filmmaking duo behind Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Their new Star Trek movie is being developed as a standalone adventure, completely disconnected from every existing timeline, TV series, or abandoned film project. 
In a franchise that has spent the last decade circling around half-launched sequels and scrapped reboots, that clean break is both a bold creative choice and a serious gamble.
Goldstein and Daley are best known for sharp, fast-paced genre blends that mix character-driven comedy with surprisingly heartfelt stakes. Game Night turned a simple couples game into a stylish, twisty thriller, while Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves won over skeptics by leaning into charm, ensemble chemistry, and genuine affection for its source material. Their writing credits on Spider-Man: Homecoming, Horrible Bosses, and other studio comedies underline what many fans immediately wondered when this project surfaced: is Star Trek about to become a full-on comedy?
That concern is understandable. The current state of the franchise has left parts of the fanbase burned out after the divisive Kelvin timeline films and an increasingly fragmented TV slate. Some viewers feel modern Star Trek leans too hard into bombast and melodrama, chasing bigger explosions instead of the thoughtful, character-focused storytelling that defined the original series. The idea of yet another reboot can sound like the same promise we have heard again and again: this time it is really happening, this time it will fix everything.
And yet, Goldstein and Daley might be exactly the kind of outsiders Star Trek needs. Their best work shows they understand tone: you can make people laugh without turning your world into a joke. If they bring the emotional sincerity of Honor Among Thieves to Starfleet, the humor could become a way to humanize officers and flesh out crews rather than undercut the stakes. Fans terrified of a quippy parody version of Star Trek do not necessarily have to brace for a two-hour gag reel.
What truly sets this project apart is the decision to cut all official ties to previous films and shows. This is not Kelvin timeline part four, not a stealth spin-off of any current streaming series, and not a resurrection of one of the many aborted scripts that have piled up since Star Trek Beyond underperformed in 2016. That film, despite strong word of mouth, failed to earn the kind of money the studio wanted, and the planned Chris Pine-led follow-up gradually transformed from a sure thing into what Pine himself once described as a cursed sequel.
In the years since, Paramount juggled a wild mix of possibilities: an R-rated Star Trek concept inspired by Quentin Tarantino, a time-twisting adventure that would have brought Chris Hemsworth back as Kirk’s father in an Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in space riff, and even a Simon Kinberg-produced prequel. At one point there were multiple scripts in active development at the same time, yet none of them ever reached the starting line. For fans, it became almost a running joke: every new headline announced the next definitive Star Trek movie, right up until it quietly vanished.
Behind those creative swings sits a harsh financial reality. As Simon Pegg bluntly noted a few years ago, Star Trek movies do not bring in Marvel-level box office. When your budget hovers around the $200 million mark, you need a global hit just to justify the investment, and the brand has never consistently operated at that scale. It is a franchise built more on legacy and loyalty than on billion-dollar superhero-style returns.
The arrival of Skydance founder David Ellison as Paramount’s new owner adds another twist. Ellison has already indicated that this next film will not reunite the Chris Pine ensemble, reinforcing the sense that the Kelvin era is over. Instead, Goldstein and Daley have been given a rare kind of freedom in modern franchise filmmaking: start fresh, build your own crew, and chart a new corner of the galaxy without having to fix or extend anyone else’s continuity.
For long-time Trekkies, that freedom is both exciting and scary. Many still crave the philosophical debates, moral dilemmas, and quiet character beats that made the original series and its successors so enduring. They do not want another grimdark USS Criminal Enterprise that treats Starfleet as just one more edgy, corrupt institution. They want explorers again, confronted with new species, new cultures, and new ethical puzzles, not just another doomed attempt to turn Star Trek into a generic action franchise.
If Goldstein and Daley can balance their instinct for lively, ensemble-driven storytelling with the intellectual and emotional core of Star Trek, this standalone film could become the fresh jumping-on point the series has been chasing for years. But after so many false starts, fans are understandably cautious. The question hanging over this project is simple: will it finally be the movie that boldly goes somewhere new while still honoring where Star Trek came from, or just the next reboot we talk about in a few years as the one that almost happened?