'X-Men' Producer Simon Kinberg In Talks To Beam To Toby Haynes’s 'Star Trek' Movie
'X-Men' Producer Simon Kinberg In Talks To Beam To Toby Haynes’s 'Star Trek' Movie
Boldly going where he can’t botch the Dark Phoenix storyline a third time
Paramount Pictures is moving forward with its plan to progress the Star Trek film franchise from both ends. Prominent Fox-era X-Men producer Simon Kinberg is in talks to produce the film given to Andor director Toby Haynes.
If an agreement is made, it would enable him to become the creative shepherd of the entire film franchise, similar to Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman on the television side. The Haynes-directed film is set to be written by Seth Grahame-Smith whose Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was adapted by him and Kinberg, who also served as executive producer. The film is reportedly set decades earlier in the Kelvin timeline, which is said to be contemporary (nearly 60 years as an existent franchise will do that) and pertain to Starfleet’s creation and humankind’s first contact with extraterrestrial life. Kelvin timeline starter J. J. Abrams remains involved as a producer. While no release date has been set, the studio is nudging for sometime in 2025.
Kinberg’s first major screenwriting credits were for XXX: State of the Union and Mr. & Mrs. Smith before landing X-Men: The Last Stand. This began a relationship with the Marvel Comics franchise, seemingly culminating with serving as an executive producer on this summer’s Deadpool & Wolverine, as he was a producer on the previous films in the series. He also produced X-Men: First Class before writing and producing its followup Days of Future Past, a success that for better and worse resulted in a greater creative control serving the same roles on follow-up installments Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix, which were widely disliked by critics and audiences. Notably, Dark Phoenix and The Last Stand both adapted the acclaimed Phoenix Saga, and it is generally accepted that he did poorly both times. His position also made him a producer on Logan and The New Mutants, an executive producer on both of Fox’s X-Men television series of the concurrent decade, The Gifted and Legion, and one of three writers on the also much-derided 2015 Fantastic Four which included director Josh Trank.
Along the way he also wrote Jumper, Sherlock Holmes, and This Means War, and produced Elysium, Cinderella, Chappie, The Martian, and Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot films. He received Thanks credits on Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Rogue One and was a co-creator, writer and executive producer on Rebels. A fourth film with the Chris Pine-led cast is being written by Steve Yockey and will close that part of the series which began in 2009 and last had a film in 2016.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter