If there’s a running joke currently going in Hollywood that’s funnier to us than Chris Pine saying “Fuck if I know” every time someone asks him about a new Star Trek movie, we’re not privy to it. Pine, who’s debuting his new film Poolman this week, got asked the obligatory question about the film franchise that made him a movie star—and which he is still, hypothetically, the star of, eight years after it last released a movie—and made it clear that he’s still getting his Star Trek news from the same places as the rest of us.
“I honestly don’t know,” Pine told Business Insider this week, adding that, “There was something in the news of a new writer coming on board. I thought there was already a script, but I guess I was wrong, or they decided to pivot. As it’s always been with Trek, I just wait and see.” Which has been the Pine party line for the better part of a decade at this point, as he’s made it clear in interviews over the last few years that communication from Paramount about the franchise has been fairly minimal ever since the release of Star Trek Beyond in 2016. (Including, apparently, the arrival of incoming screenwriter Steve Yockey.)
The following period has been a tumultuous eight years for Trek, which has seen it reclaim huge chunks of its territory on television and streaming, while completely failing to put any kind of dent in theaters, where it previously dominated after the release of JJ Abrams’ Star Trek in 2009. Not for lack of trying: Even discounting the whole “Quentin Tarantino is making a Star Trek!” thing, which always seemed a little bit make-believe, there have still been multiple Trek film scripts in active development, including one that appears to have gotten scuttled after director Matt Shakman jumped ship to go direct Fantastic Four for Disney. Variety, for instance, notes that there’s also an “origin story” movie still in some kind of development, even though the Star Trek universe is already up there with, like, Spider-Man in terms of having its origins thoroughly explored in TV and film. None of which, really, is Chris Pine’s problem: Man just wants to fly his spaceship, and will presumably hear about his next chance to do so along with the rest of us.