Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto Sign For ‘Star Trek 4’

Paramount and Justin Lin are just about ready to hit engage on the production of Star Trek Beyond, the third film in the rebooted Star Trek franchise featuring Chris Pine as Captain James T. Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Mr. Spock. Shooting is scheduled to begin this week in Vancouver, but before cameras could roll there was some negotiating that had to get done between Paramount and Pine and Quinto’s agents.

The Hollywood Reporter has all the sordid details, but the tl;dr version is basically Pine and Quinto’s didn’t get paid much on the first Star Trek, and didn’t get much in the way of raises on the second, but with the third coming out, they had enough leverage to demand a big chunk of the profits. They got one, but along with those raises came options for a fourth Star Trek. So assuming Star Trek Beyond is a hit, you can expect a Beyond Star Trek Beyond (official title TBD) at some point down the line.

Pine and Quinto certainly deserve a large amount of credit (or financial compensation) for the new Trek’s success, having successfully replaced William Shatner and the late Leonard Nimoy in the roles of Kirk and Spock in a way that was respectful to their legacies without remaining strictly beholden to their performances. For a while, it looked like Star Trek 3 was going to come from writer Roberto Orci, who was also scheduled to make his directorial debut with the movie. But then Paramount switched gears, Orci left the project, and Lin came in to direct a new screenplay co-written by nu-Scotty Simon Pegg. Star Trek Beyond opens in theaters on July 8, 2016.