Star Trek’s Best Series Is Getting A Movie?
Star Trek: Prodigy's Kevin Hageman says he's pushing as hard as he can to get as much Prodigy media as he can made, including a feature film.
Not that long ago, I told you I thought Star Trek: Prodigy was the best of the franchise’s five current series, and now the show’s creators are saying they want it to also become one of the best Trek movies. Prodigy co-creators Dan and Kevin Hageman, along with producer Ben Hibon, sat down with the Mission Log podcast (via TrekMovie) and said they’re doing everything they can to get “many, many seasons” of the series, an animated movie, and maybe even a live-action feature.
As the discussion of Star Trek: Prodigy‘s future came up, Kevin Hageman said they’ve already been talking about that.
“All our heads are always in the clouds here. Like we want to do an animated movie. I would love for the show to keep going for many, many seasons… Not just an animated feature, but if you could do a live-action feature it would be absolutely stunning. So we have lofty ambitions.”
-Kevin Hageman, Star Trek: Prodigy co-creator
As far as the possibility of any of their “lofty ambitions” coming to fruition, Hageman is hopeful that if the viewers keep showing up, anything is possible.
“So we’re pushing as hard as we can. And everyone at the network and the studio have been so supportive, so wonderful. They love our show. Notes are so minimal… If the viewers are there, then the show will keep going. But if the viewership isn’t there, if the numbers aren’t there, it’s going to be hard to convince the studio.”
-Kevin Hageman, Star Trek: Prodigy co-creator
The notion of a Star Trek: Prodigy live-action feature is particularly intriguing, though considering the CGI necessary for character creation as well as modifying actors’ appearances, it would practically be an animated movie regardless. Characters like Murf, Zero, Rok-Tahk, and Drednok would almost certainly need to be completely digitally realized. Jankom Pog is supposed to be much smaller than other Tellarites so — assuming the character wasn’t recast (and allow me to add a presumptuous “how dare they” to the notion) — he would either need to also be a digital character or Jason Mantzoukas would have to be digitally shrunk somehow.
There would also need to be significant use of the de-aging technology made famous by Marvel features like Captain Marvel and Captain America: Civil War. The holographic Kathryn Janeway would need to appear as young as she does in 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis, and — particularly if Kate Mulgrew ever goes forward with the much-speculated Star Trek: Janeway — even the more flesh-and-bone Admiral Janeway would need to look younger than Mulgrew does today. Likewise, assuming he appeared, Robert Beltran would need to be made into a less-weathered Captain Chakotay.
The one thing that does make a Star Trek: Prodigy feature seem a little bit more possible is what consistently seems like the decreasing possibility that we’ll see another Kelvin Timeline film. Paramount had announced Star Trek 4 would be going into production by the end of 2022, but after stars like Chris Pine and Karl Urban announced it was news to them, it became more and more obvious that wasn’t going to happen. Eventually, the film was removed entirely from Paramount’s release schedule.
