Boldly going where only men have gone before, “Fear the Walking Dead” executive co-producer Kalinda Vazquez is writing an original “Star Trek” film for Paramount Pictures, with JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot producing. If the film gets the green light, Vazquez would be the first woman to write a feature film “Star Trek”.
There are no details yet on the nature of Vazquez’s approach, including whether it would include any previously established “Star Trek” characters. But Vazquez recently wrote episodes of the burgeoning galaxy of the TV series “Trek”, now broadcast by Paramount Plus. In 2019, she wrote “Ask Not”, an episode of “Star Trek: Short Treks” in which Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) tests a Starfleet cadet. And in 2020, Vazquez wrote the teleplay of “Terra Firma, Parte 2”, an episode of “Star Trek: Discovery” set almost entirely in the Mirror Universe, in which the benevolent Federation is, instead, the bloodthirsty Terran Empire.
Along with his work on “Trek” and “Fear the Walking Dead”, Vazquez wrote about episodes of “Runaways”, “Once Upon a Time” and “Nikita”. She is also writing a Marvel comic series about America Chavez, Marvel’s first Latinx superhero LBGTQ to have its own title series. And she is reportedly developing an adaptation of the science fiction novel “Roadmarks” for HBO with George RR Martin.
Vazquez’s “Star Trek” project is the latest in a series of “Trek” features still under development at Paramount. In 2017, Quentin Tarantino partnered with Abrams and Bad Robot in a potential film written by Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant”), although Tarantino’s commitment to directing the project seems tenuous at best. In August, Paramount also decided to pause work on “Star Trek” by director-writer Noah Hawley (“Fargo” for FX), after Emma Watts took over as president of the studio. Hawley said Variety that his project would “start from scratch” with a new set of characters that have an explicit connection to the established “Trek” canon.
Deadline first reported the news.