Star Trek 4 Will Be Directed by S.J. Clarkson, the Franchise’s First Female Director

S.J. Clarkson is set to direct Star Trek 4, according to Variety, which makes her the first female director to helm a Star Trek film. 

Paramount announced at CinemaCon that it planned to produce a fourth Star Trek film in its reboot series. The new film will follow a time travel plot, which will see Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk cross paths with his deceased father, played by a returning Chris Hemsworth, who first appeared in 2009’s Star Trek. The script comes from J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, who were both who were both uncredited writers on Star Trek: Beyond.

As for Clarkson, the British director has previously worked on American TV shows like Dexter, Bates Motel, Orange is the New Black, Jessica Jones, and The Defenders. She has also directed quite a bit of British TV, as you might have guessed, including episodes of the original British version of Life on Mars. Clarkson made her feature film debut in 2010 with Toast, starring Bates Motel‘s Freddie Highmore. 

This has been a big week in Star Trek movie news. Just yesterday, Paramount CEO Jim Gianopulous announced that the studio has plans for at least two more Star Trek movies. Clarkson’s time travel narrative will be one, which leaves the other Star Trek movie up for grabs. There has been talk of a Star Trek movie in development from a Quentin Tarantino pitch, but Variety’s sources seem to think this film would come after Clarkson’s movie.

Furthermore, in a recent interview with ET Canada, Star Trek star Zachary Quinto mentioned multiple scripts in development:

First of all, I think there’s a couple of scripts. Because there was a script being written before Quentin Tarantino came up with his idea for a potential film. And so I think they are kind of developing more than one. So I don’t know what is going to happen. Quentin is off doing another movie. So, I feel like we are in a state of anticipation. All of us are really excited about the idea of working with Quentin on a Trek film, but I know Simon Pegg and Doug Jung, who wrote the last film, are writing a script and there are another set of writers writing a script. So I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen.

Basically, there are a lot of Star Trek scripts floating around. But at least we know, officially, that one is moving forward—and with the first female director in Star Trek feature film history, no less!