Although there’s still no real certainty as to what will happen next with Star Trek on the big screen, franchise star Zachary Quinto says he’s still on board to reprise the role of Spock if Star Trek 4 goes forth. Over the course of three movies, Quinto served as the franchise’s most famous Vulcan, taking over the role originally played by Leonard Nimoy in the original television series. After wrapping his time as Spock in 2016, Quinto is still not sure if he’ll ever get the call to suit back up in the Starfleet uniform, but should the opportunity arise, you can count on him coming back.
Speaking with The Talk about his role as Spock, Zachary Quinto had this to say about a potential return to the part.
“Absolutely. We talk about it all the time as the crew of the Enterprise, we’re all incredibly close friends in real life and I think all of us would welcome the opportunity to go back and keep telling those stories. Seems like a bit of a saturated market at this point, so I’m not sure what the plans are for the feature film version of the franchise, but we’re all here if they want to beam us up.”
Directed by J.J. Abrams, the first Star Trek movie to feature Quinto was released in 2009. The movie takes place in an alternate reality and reboots the franchise, bringing in new actors to play classic roles from the original series. Along with Quinto as Spock, the movie starred Chris Pine as Captain James T. Kirk, Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy, Zoe Saldana as Nyota Uhura, Simon Pegg as Scotty, John Cho as Hikaru Sulu, and Anton Yelchin as Pavel Chekov. Two sequels would follow in 2013 and 2016 with the main cast all returning. Sadly, Yelchin passed away in 2016, so any potential sequel wouldn’t include Chekov.
As Quinto noted, there are other Star Trek projects that are currently in production on the small screen, so this may be what’s slowing down progress on the franchise’s return to movie theaters. Sonequa Martin-Green leads the new series Star Trek: Discovery, which is set a decade before the events of the original series. Patrick Stewart also returned to the franchise for the sequel series Star Trek: Picard, which also brings back other fan favorites from The Next Generation. Both shows are streaming on CBS All Access.
There are multiple possibilities Paramount can go with bringing Star Trek back to the big screen. Noah Hawley reportedly signed on to begin work on a new Star Trek movie, but production seems to have been paused since that announcement was made. Quentin Tarantino has also spoken about his desire to make a Star Trek movie, which could potentially bring back Quinto as Spock. The studio has confirmed that there are still plans to develop more Star Trek movies last month, but there’s still no word as to when production will officially begin with any of them.
With no plans to reprise the role of Spock anytime soon, Quinto has kept himself busy with other projects. Recently, he played the antagonist role of Charlie Manx on the AMC horror series NOS4A2 for two seasons. He also voiced Lex Luthor in the animated DC movie Superman: Man of Tomorrow and can be seen in the new Netflix drama The Boys in the Band. Quinto also hosts the History Channel’s revival of the In Search of… documentary series. Hopefully, we’ll get to see him boldly exploring new worlds and new life forms again some day as well. This news comes to us from The Talk.
