It won’t shock you to study that “Challenge Hail Mary” creator Andy Weir is a “Star Trek” fan. In spite of everything, the story’s lovable alien engineer Rocky is from the identical photo voltaic system as Mr. Spock. In truth, Weir is such an enormous fan that he even had the chance to pitch his personal “Star Trek” sequence to Paramount, and it was … rejected.
On the identical podcast the place Weir revealed this factoid, he additionally mentioned “I do not like loads of the brand new ‘Trek'” and even went to date to say “these exhibits are s**t.” That mentioned, this much-quoted portion of the podcast was largely steered by host Will “Important Drinker” Jordan, who argued that Paramount ought to “kill all the fashionable ‘Star Trek’ and decanonize all of it… Every thing from ‘Enterprise’ onwards.” Weir himself truly pushed again in opposition to this harsh take and spotlighted a couple of fashionable “Trek” exhibits that he thinks are keepers:
“You are a little bit extra extreme than I’m … I like ‘Unusual New Worlds,’ I feel it is fairly good … I did not hate ‘Enterprise. I assumed it was type of bizarre … ‘Decrease Decks’ I assumed was entertaining and enjoyable. All of the others, they’ll go.”
“All of the others” contains Paramount+’s first massive revival sequence, “Star Trek: Discovery,” in addition to the “Subsequent Technology” sequel sequence “Star Trek: Picard” and the latest live-action sequence, “Starfleet Academy,” which is ready to finish after simply two seasons.
Challenge Hail Mary had one benefit Star Trek would not have
Though Andy Weir would clearly be joyful to tackle a “Star Trek” challenge, he additionally mused that there is a draw back to tackling an enormous, established franchise:
“For the most important properties like ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Star Wars,’ you are all the time going to get studio interference. And one factor that I’ve to say on [‘Project Hail Mary] … Amazon is new to the [movie production] sport, and … I imply, they gave us notes on the cuts and stuff like that, however they weren’t up in our faces pushing us round. And you realize that is taking place within the ‘Star Wars’ movies and stuff like that.
“So, I feel a part of the rationale why [‘Project Hail Mary’] ended up being such a great film […] is as a result of the studio simply let the creative folks do their job. They let Phil Lord and Chris Miller be administrators and have management. And so they did not are available in and get in the best way and say, ‘No, change this, no, do this,’ as a result of it is not some 50-year-old legacy franchise that they need to do issues with.”
It is actually true that there was loads of strain on “Star Trek: Discovery” to be a flagship present for Paramount+ amid the frenzy of the streaming wars. Some followers have argued that “Star Trek” has suffered from oversaturation, with 5 exhibits operating concurrently at one level (“Discovery,” “Picard,” Decrease Decks,” “Unusual New Worlds,” and “Prodigy”).
Maybe Paramount got here to the identical conclusion, because the manufacturing frenzy has now wound down. The ultimate seasons of “Unusual New Worlds” and “Starfleet Academy” have already wrapped, and there are at the moment no different “Trek” initiatives at the moment within the works (that we all know of). However maybe we’ll get to see Weir’s tackle “Trek” on day.
