Boldly taking the Star Trek franchise in a new direction sadly sounds like it is not on the cards for director Noah Hawley, at least, not anytime soon. When asked recently about any progress on his proposed Star Trek 4, Hawley, best known for his work on the Fargo series, could only offer disappointment.

"It doesn't appear to be in my immediate future. I think when Emma [Watts, President of Paramount Pictures] came in, she took a look at the franchise and wanted to go in a different direction with it. But you know, life is long, we were very close to production but in this business that doesn't mean much. You got to get out of the gate to be in the race if you know what I mean."

Noah Hawley is just one of several writers working on scripts for potential Star Trek projects, who recently offered some insight into his plans for the franchise, revealing that he planned to move away from what audiences are familiar with and introduce a whole new crew to the beloved sci-fi universe. "We're not doing Kirk and we're not doing Picard," he said earlier this year while speaking with Variety. "It's a start from scratch that then allows us to do what we did with Fargo, where for the first three hours you go, 'Oh, it really has nothing to do with the movie,' and then you find the money. So, you reward the audience with a thing that they love."

Though Hawley's update regarding Star Trek is discouraging, the director was a little more optimistic about his potential Alien series saying, "I know that there's an effort to reshuffle a lot of things post-Disney takeover and it was a conversation that I had a couple years back," he said. "And I have not in the last few weeks been having those conversations about it. But I know that like any studio that there's a great desire to make the most of one's library so I wouldn't be surprised to see something like that."

While it certainly sounds like Hawley is putting his work on Star Trek to one side, it is possible that the studio will instead pick up one of the other ideas being cooked up. Alongside Hawley's take, the second idea comes from a script written by The Revenant's Mark L. Smith, which Quentin Tarantino once considering directing, and is rumored to be "based on an episode of the classic 'Star Trek' series that takes place largely earthbound in a 1930s gangster setting." The third and final approach would be a straight-up continuation of the movies that began in 2009 with J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, with the idea reportedly revolving around time travel and bringing back Kirk's father, played in the first movie by Thor star, Chris Hemsworth.

Should they decide to go ahead with the latter and make a Star Trek 4 in the Abrams continuation, lead actor Chris Pine has previously stated his desire to return. "I know that Paramount is coming out of having restructured a bit and kind of a major corporate restructuring. So hopefully, when all that dust settles, something concrete will come out of it, and we'll get to work. I'd love to do it."

The future of the Star Trek franchise on the big screen is in flux, and only time will tell how the studio decides to move forward. This comes to us from Deadline.