First Star Trek Movie Reboot Details Revealed By Directors — Will Legacy Characters Return?

It's been almost a year since "Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein were hired to write and direct the next "Star Trek" movie. A lot has changed in Hollywood since then: The franchise's home studio, Paramount, had just been acquired by David Ellison's Skydance at the time, but as of this week, Paramount has paved the way to complete a merger with Warner Bros. Discovery that will officially close in a few days and surely have massive ramifications on the entertainment industry. But while we wait to see exactly what those will be, getting "Star Trek" back on the big screen seems to be a priority for Ellison, and we're starting to hear a bit more about what this new movie will entail.

Speaking with Empire Magazine, Daley and Goldstein confirmed a detail from the initial report, stating that the movie will not feature any "legacy characters, nobody that you've met before." Daley explained that the film will be set in "a different time, not a different timeline per se, but it's a little further in the future." The duo quickly clarified that it takes place in "sort of a different timeline," but explicitly "not the Kelvin timeline. It's not the J.J. [Abrams] timeline." We'd already assumed the Kelvin timeline was done and that we would not see Chris Pine, Zoe Saldaña, Zachary Quinto, and the rest of that cast pop up again here, but now, we've heard it straight from the horse's mouth.

The "further in the future" line is also interesting. That means the story will be set sometime after 2263, when "Star Trek Beyond" takes place. In the prime timeline, that's around when "The Original Series" begins, so even though there won't be any familiar faces, it sounds like we could potentially see some familiar events play out (should the filmmakers need to lean on anything that's come before).

But the most interesting comments the filmmakers made were about the intended tone of the new film. One might assume that Paramount hiring the guys behind "Game Night," "Vacation," and the Ryan Reynolds/Kenneth Branagh action comedy "Mayday" means that the studio is looking for a comedy-forward approach to this new reboot. But it sounds like that's not the case at all. Speaking to Empire, John Francis Daley explained:

"I would say it's probably our darkest film that we've ever written. It's not a comedy ... There is our sensibility in it, and we do find levity, but it's in the characters who find humor in even the darkest moments, which is just true to real life.

We both went on an aircraft carrier when we were researching 'Mayday,' and it can be a very fraught landscape working on those ships, and people have to find levity. They have to find joy in even the most serious moments, and that's the approach we have in this film."

"You want it to be a fun watch," Goldstein said. "Doesn't mean you're laughing your head off. It just means you're in it, and you're enjoying it."

To quote Mr. Spock: Fascinating. Too often, studios hire people to essentially do a slight variation on the successful thing they just did. But it sounds like this is going to be a case of Daley and Goldstein stepping into a recognizable universe with the freedom to diverge from the tone of the projects that put them on the map. We don't know what this new era of "Star Trek" will hold, but at least it's launching from a pretty exciting position.